nemorathwald | Entries tagged with relationships

No matter how useful and beneficial something is, it can be done wrong. I'm not saying it's always bad. It's just done right some times and wrong other times. When we conceive of ourselves as belonging to the hero team and fighting the villains team in a superhero movie, it becomes impossible to conceive of any way that is doing it wrong. Hold that in mind.

If you bounce off of this blog post quickly, or if you assume bad faith, at the very least please read "The Stifling Air Of Rigid Radicalism", an excerpt from the book Joyful Militancy by two radicals. It's an excellent book.

For years, communities have had to deal with emotionally-reactive members who were there to antagonize other members. This was relatively easy when we were insisting to free-speech extremists on the right wing that we require much better emotional regulation from them. It's become harder now that it's disenfranchised demographics exhibiting much the same attitudes and personality disorders. (It's important to understand that almost no members of under-privileged groups indulge in this. But it only takes a few, for reasons I'll get into. And the majority of the time, it's someone else attempting to act on their behalf.)

If I had a time machine to go back in time a few years, and tell myself this story, past-me would have assumed I was hearing a dumb and emotionally-activated right-winger describe their paranoid delusional caricature of activists. So I get what you're probably thinking. If you're like me, you're skeptical. That's why I've waited so long to write this story. I don't know what else to tell you. The caricature is coming true, making it difficult to hold people together.

Part I.

Since 2016, many of the most active leaders of my local polyamory group in Detroit rebranded themselves Relationship Anarchists, and redefined "Polyamory" to mean every bad thing that anyone labeling themselves polyamorous had ever done to them. All the parts they approved of were defined as belonging, fully and only, within their re-branded term for themselves.

They became seized by extreme conviction. They began Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion meetups which I attended and found very interesting, although the events did not succeed in their goals.

The central tenet, repeatedly emphasized at their Relationship Anarchy meetups, was that their intimate relationships in the home were filtered through the lens of a zeal for identitarian justice in the world. In seeking to "de-colonize one's own mind", they redefined "the personal is political" to reduce the political to the merely psychological.

Selecting the right label for the group took on heightened significance-- since the desired purpose of their label was to provoke confrontation, they debated the various ways clueless newbie polyamorists, who they wanted to antagonize, might misinterpret various labels to sustain their privileged comfort. They started debating whether to reject the term Relationship Anarchist ("RA") in favor of the term "Political Relater". After the rebranding cycle repeated often enough, I said maybe finding the right label is not actually a solution for their dissatisfactions.

I attended their first annual convention, RAD (Relationship Anarchy Discussions). Attendees were required to be in general agreement with a list of resources provided by the unconference. The list was roughly 134 different Tumblr posts and manifestos that often contradicted each other. Many were not really "ideas"; years later I realized these were more like slam poetry. I tried to pick out a structure of justifications from this mess, to model in my mind what would qualify me in the minds of the founders. Which criteria was really being applied privately in the minds of the four people who approved attendance applications? I wanted to go to them and just ask. But they didn't have the energy to talk to people. Sometimes they called that energy "spoons". A process of back and forth discussion would have been really constructive to ensure I was not attending wrongly. Instead, there was a form. And in this form, they asked questions that omitted what I regarded as the most likely and relevant potential points of conflict between us. I wanted to just put my cards on the table, and prevent them from having a bad experience at the unconference itself. But they didn't have enough "emotional labor" for that.

The unconference paid two medical personnel to be there. The application process had made it clear that attendees were on notice to avoid any appearance of doctrinal impurity; and yet, the indomitable spirit of a community of ungovernable anarchists was apparently no substitute for marketable skills under capitalism, possessed by these two white men, who we were there to get paid. I did not ever hear this remarked upon.

The unconference was almost entirely wishful thinking. We got to hear from one person who was living out the Relationship Anarchist dream, in a remote commune for homosexuals with no electricity or plumbing, who had all fled the violence that had been committed against them in the wider world. We learned from him that everyone there was constantly suicidal, they barely could tolerate each other, and there were constant fights. The speaker had to be coaxed into speaking at all, and seemed miserable and expressed no interest in wanting any of us to suffer the same fate.

In the final session, I asked to discuss the criteria the organizers had used to determine who was in this room and who was not, and ask the group if it matched up with the overall will of the group, in case most of us were just silently compliant. But the organizers said they did not have enough energy for that. In retrospect, I should have said they are at liberty to leave the room, and the rest of the group was at liberty to discuss whatever we wish to discover the group's goals. Wouldn't that be an expression of the leaderlessness to which we supposedly aspired?

The organizers wrapped the walls with a large sheet of paper, and invited the group to write every problem in the world. (Except the power they were exercising in that room.) Then they laid the paper out and asked the group how to solve ... *gestures* ... all of this. But... without power. Anarchism is not supposed to take power. Somehow, if they changed the world, that would not count as power? And anyway, power is energy, and energy is spoons, and using their own spoons wouldn't be fair. Instead of ideas, they had a lot of feelings, and they made each other feel heard. Perhaps if they were mad enough, other people would change the world.

When you are responsible for everything, you are not held responsible for any specific thing in particular.

After the convention, they went on to abandon publicly-accessible meetups, to form what is effectively a queer separatism commune in one of the organizers' homes. They named it "The Compound". God, I sound delusional. There is no way to describe Qanon and their Woke edgelord counterparts without sounding like one is making up things to be mean. They even have a Patreon for The Compound.

The rest of us have been rebuilding the normal polyamory meetups over time.

Part II.

It was not long before I was invited to a Zoom call, with about a half-dozen people within the Relationship Anarchy group. They described having experienced power dynamics and status slaps. (The founders of the group were among the accused. They were invited, but were not present.) I asked if I could record the meeting and make an automated transcript, which I have put in my Roam Research graph.

The discussion brought to light a lot of power dynamics. You only belonged in the group if you turn most conversations of any importance into confrontation and shame. This was done with a smile, to create plausible deniability for the passive-aggression; look at their YouTube channel and decide for yourself. If confrontation is the point of the group, why be surprised when it breaks down in acrimony? After all, the only people remaining there to be educated are each other, right? This phenomenon is so common in activist spaces that it has a name: Picking Out The Villain Of The Day.

What I saw in the group was a constant need for ever-greater measures to prove to the group that which could never finally be settled, as if one owed a societal debt, but nothing one can do will ever reduce the balance on the debt.

My own comments in the meeting were not about subtle power; they mostly concerned explicit power, as it was expressed in the RAD (Relationship Anarchy Discussions) by who was allowed to attend the annual conference and what was allowed to be posted to the Facebook group. There was no transparency around that power, and I thought it should be guided by the actual will of the group rather than the group's four self-appointed leaders.

Moments before the meeting ended, it was revealed that the meeting had not been about the annual conference or the Facebook group. Bewildered, I expressed confusion about which organization this meeting was about. In conversations afterward, it was revealed that as anarchists, they did not value organization, most of them had already left RAD, and my redesigns to rules for the conference and Facebook group were inapplicable, and moot. I realized the organization had already dissolved, and the meeting was about buddies who hang out. I finally realized Relationship Anarchy Discussions had been intended more like a form of slam poetry or dream journals. I had mistaken it for ideas about having an effect on the world.

Part III.

We see emerging, a greater awareness of the important concept of intersectionality. With it, we have also seen the rise of a simplistic misunderstanding of intersectionality, as a way to perform multi-directional status slaps and power games. This dynamic is now playing out in houses of worship, classrooms, activity groups, conventions, discussion groups, local spinoffs of Burning Man, and anywhere else where new social norms lead inevitably to constant acrimony. When not kept in check, it leads most of these groups into a revolving door of constant splitting and collapse. In the past several years, most online social groups I am involved with have developed the following unsustainable and self-defeating norms:

Redefine societal change on the world stage, to mean which buddies in the friends group get invited for parties or are shunned.
"The personal is political" is misunderstood to mean that if you don't give your friends their way, especially in terms of their feelings, it is vaguely associated with the genocide of their identity group.
Standpoint theory. If you are not a member of an underclass, you lack standing to speak about any statement about it, no matter how incoherent.
If someone makes a demand, or makes it on behalf of a less-privileged person who is not making the demand, do not ask how the demand would lead to justice outcomes. If someone asks that question, take it as evidence of opposition to the cause, or insufficient zeal. This is a double-bind in which, either you admit you are incapable of perceiving reality for yourself and need someone to take over your choices, or, by rejecting the demand, you prove that you can't perceive reality yourself, and need someone to take over your choices.
A feeling or expression of grief or outrage amounts to doing something about justice.
Effect matters, but intent does not matter at all. Therefore, any person's finances, time, or health may take second-place to hurt feelings, by escalating one's own feelings of hurt to get one's way.
Base your interpretation of your observations on your first emotional impulse. If you observe that someone disagrees with your interpretation-- especially your interpretation about them-- believe your first emotional impulse of suspicion. They must have sinister motives to undermine your ability to perceive reality, known as "gaslighting". (They can apply this to you in reverse. This accounts for mutual accusations of gaslighting.)
The social group exists for one reason: to commisserate and offer support. That's the only thing anyone should be there for. "No advice, please." Therefore, offer unqualified support with no discernment. As a result, you believe the first person who gets up to a microphone. Your sympathies might reverse if you find out more later, but you get to feel good by holding space and making someone feel heard, and that's all that matters.
Interpret "uncomfortable" as "unsafe". Safety from physical violence over-rules any other consideration, and the appropriate response to physical violence is to control others. Conflating comfort with safety means that anything you want over-rules anything another person wants.

Part IV.

Imagine if we could wave a magic wand, and get a trade-off. The magic wand would remove most congeniality and bonhomie from our own social spaces; conflicts get more intractable rather than less; it's predominated by pissing matches and personality disorders; and we burn out our organizers. Imagine that the same magic wand would eliminate redlining, job discrimination, police violence, environmentally unhealthy housing, and other worthy non-feelings objectives. Imagine also that the magic wand would raise the median income, median wealth, average lifespan, incarceration rates, home-ownership rates, and access to health care, of all marginalized people.

It would be a worthwhile trade-off, right? Certainly.

It does none of those things.

None of those important things are at stake in the argument in the online space. The only effect it can have is who likes who.

I want groups to reach some kind of equilibrium, even if it doesn't favor me, or actively works against me. But do you see such an equilibrium emerging? It's not. The social norms I listed above don't remove privileged people. They don't even reduce our power. Those norms just get exploited, leaving the marginalized people in the community even less coordinated in solidarity than they were before.

Part IV.

I wish the above story were the only one of its kind I could tell.

There are almost no members of under-privileged groups who get a power trip from dominance tactics. Mostly it's their self-appointed representatives. The few-- the very, very few-- who enjoy doing that have ever-increasing influence.

More and more of our communities give them approval to make any demand over any behavior for any reason, or no reason at all. Asking that such demand be justified with actual justice outcomes is a violation of a taboo which was never spelled out in the rules of the online group. Instead, one person has a "fight" response from "fight/flight/fawn", and someone else responds to that with a "fawn" response, and somehow that is considered justice, socially.

No matter how many advantages are unfairly given to me in courtrooms and hiring interview rooms, that's not the balance of power in the online conversation space. Filling the room you are in with demands for subordination and silence does nothing but encourage a very few cynical opportunists to show off how much power they can display. There is an inability by victims to recognize the power in the specific room they are in. It doesn't fit the narrative.

I have educated myself exhaustively for the better part of a decade on behavioral requests around micro-aggressions and which identities own which ideas and expressions. The views I read usually do not represent most of the people in the class they intend to help. For example, the vast majority of Black people, such as my neighbors here in Detroit, are far to the right of the average white leftist on race-related issues. Almost no Pacific Islanders call themselves "poly" and most of them don't identify with the term "Polynesia" which was invented by white people. But it doesn't matter. It became taboo to call one's self "poly", and fashionable to call one's self "polyam". It is nothing more than a way for a privileged people to show their compliance with shared social norms.

When you demand someone be quiet and listen, but after they have listened, it's clear what you say has no efficacy to make change in the world, they will be unconvinced. If they just decide to agree with you because you have standing to speak and they do not, even though they know perfectly well your behavioral request doesn't lead to progress, that's not an ally. You're demanding performativity. If you don't question yourself, and you demand no one else does either, don't be surprised when you're surrounded only with the performativity of compliance.

My years-long quest to educate myself led to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion speakers and writers who use only emotionally-loaded language that's sparse on details. So I dug for the details, for years. What I eventually found was mystical Jungian-shadow bodywork. Conveniently for this "work", it is so abstract that it can never be held accountable to produce any justice outcomes.What is the actual "doing the work"? Not self-improvement evasions like "understanding", "sitting with", "holding space", "making others feel heard". If I make you feel heard, but nothing changes, that's just manipulating you. As Socko the sockpuppet said in Bo Burnham's Netflix special "Inside", one's own self-actualization doesn't change anything. OK, Socko, then what? Nothing. Socko has no solution. Eventually I had to admit it's because no one has a solution. And if those affected by the problems have no solution, and I search for years for a solution, eventually I have to admit you don't want your problems to stop. You want to feel heard. Remember? "No advice, please."

What Socko actually gets, instead of justice, is vocabulary, identity symbols, and empty symbolic gestures of belonging. We should recognize each other at the bottom of the same gladiator pit, but instead, we dig a hole in the bottom of the gladiator pit, and try to throw each other in, and feel-- for one small moment-- as though we are in the stands.

The book "Non Violent Communication" describes going through three phases. The first is a phase of dependency and people-pleasing. Basically having weak boundaries.

So you enter the second phase, which is autonomous inflexibility. Up until that point you were a people-pleaser, so you got very little practice at figuring out the when and where and why to have boundaries. So now everything's just a boundary. You decide in isolation what that will look like, without communication, and declare it unilaterally. There's not much relating.

To be clear: if that's what you want to do, then do it. You're just not relating. And that's fine; you don't always want to relate to everyone, or at all times.

The inflexible phase feels insecure. Sometimes the act of asking another person what they want, feels threatening. Hearing them out, feels threatening like a surrender, like a violation.

This phase is a step up from people-pleasing, so be kind to yourself. Relating needs to take a back seat, while one weans one's self off of people-pleasing. The inflexible person is busy training themselves to not buckle to shame and fear.

As you gain practice at figuring out the when and where and why to choose your boundaries and compromises, you gradually enter the third phase. You go from dependence, to independence, to inter-dependence. It's oriented toward your own goals for compassion toward those who you have chosen. Not oriented around shame or fear. Oriented around your own goals for connection, and seeking out where that might overlap with another person's goals for connection.

Here's how that works. What you are doing is two negotiations. One is between your desires and the other person's desires. The other negotiation is between two drives within you, the drive for connection and the drive for autonomy.

I like to take this negotiation literally. I make deals with myself. The "characters" (my conflicting tendencies) are sitting at a negotiating table. I know they like each other, because I'm my own friend and I get along with myself. Sometimes I make mistakes, so I'm not quick to trust just one character and always distrust all the other characters. I roll my eyes at myself when one character gets on a tear, but come on man, this is your loved one you're talking about here, this is your SELF.

One character NEVER wants to go camping; he wants to spend that time recording podcasts. Another really wants to be close to the people who invited me to go camping, and has problems with procrastinating my podcasts. And you know what? I need both of them. So I make up a dialog where they are asking things from each other and striking deals, and hash out a compromise that works for all of them.

Polyamory-related blogs and online discussion groups are reposting the following paragraph:

Hey, can any polyamory blogs with a follower count please inform the palagi portion of the community that “poly” is a Polynesian community identifier, and is important to our safe spaces.

Using “polyamory” is cool just like using “polygender” and “Polyromantic” and or Polysexual” is cool. But the abbreviation “poly” is already in use.

"Palagi" means "foreigner". It is a word specific to Tonga/Samoa, not all of the Pacific Islands.

The post is from a Tumblr blog, "actuallypoly", which is now replaced with advertisements for sneakers. But the Wayback Machine has an archive of the page as it existed in 2015.

Farther down the page, one of the rebloggers immediately points out "Polynesian" is colonialist. A word invented by white people.

Almost all discussions in online polyamory spaces seem to have taken the following two approaches:

#1) White people getting defensive, or shaking their fists in defiance, toward other white people who are reblogging a claim about what non-white people want.

#2) White people capitulating to the approval of other white people, about what they claim non-white people want.

You can tell a lot about what someone's goal was, by paying attention to when they stop. For example, if your goal was to please your local polyamory community, but you don't care what Polynesians want, you are now done.

Then there is approach #3. So far, I only saw it happen once.

#3) White people expressing curiosity to other white people.

As it so happens, I have a surplus of spoons to spend on a few Google searches. I would like to reward curiosity as an alternative to defensiveness and one-upmanship. The problem arose from being out of touch with Polynesians, right? So I tried to find where these online safe spaces are, which the Tumblr post referred to.

All but two of the first page of search results for "poly polynesian" are debates between polyamorists. We have already colonized the searchability of this word. Apparently, the indigenous conversation which we were trying not to talk over is quieter than our conversation about quieting our own voices.

A search for the full term "polynesian", followed by the term "online communities" in quotes, reveals page after page of results that are not online communities for Polynesians, but included several other relevant items.

Here is a paper, "I define my own identity, Pacific articulations of ‘race’ and ‘culture’ on the internet", by Marianne I. Franklin of University of Amsterdam,The Netherlands, 2003.

The paper quotes comments from participants in Pacific Island-related forums in 2003. Quotes on pages 21, 27, 30, 31, 34, 40, 67 of the PDF use the abbreviation "poly". Some arguments are among self-described "Polynesians" defending the term as one they have reclaimed, and others arguing the term is a colonialist category, lumping together two recognizably different culture groups of the east and west islands.

The paper points to two online communities that existed when it was written in 2003. I visited them.

The latest 50 posts to the Facebook group "Kava Bowl Forum" were posted in 2018, not 2003. They contain no mention of "poly", the word "Polynesian", or identity concerns. What they talk about is an economic system rigged to exploit and disadvantage them.

Another thing revealed in the search was this Tumblr post. Someone from Hawaii chimed in to say the following. I will give them the last word.

"All right, so my family has never used the word Poly. We refer to ourselves by our cultures (Hawaiian, Samoan, etc…) however, this is just us personally. There are Polynesians who refer to themselves as Poly.

http://actuallypoly.tumblr.com/post/120001313953/the-abbreviation-poly-is-already-in-use

Here is a post from ActuallyPoly. It seems that the main issue is online use. They cannot tell who is Polynesian and who is not based on blog descriptions. The bigger issue is tagging, where those who are uncomfortable with polyamorous posts end up seeing them while searching things regarding their culture. Though they are mainly pointing out issues with online use, it does seem that they want a new term formed for conversational use as well. Unfortunately, at this point, I don’t think it will happen as polyamorous people have used the term poly for decades and now poly as referring to polyamory is more popular and understood by people than Poly is.

I think in conversation where there is a context, it’s fine. At this point, we realistically have to get used to sharing the term. The Greek word Poly does mean “many” and if it’s contextual we will know what you mean. If people make crude jokes about Poly people being poly, first off, stop that shit in its tracks cause there is nothing crude about polyamory, and second they are being little shits for willfully conflating a racial identifier with something they view as crude instead of asking for clarification, so cut them from your life."

Today I had a conversation with a graphic design client who, for the past several years, I have charged $20 per image. It is an example of how, merely by setting your own boundaries in a healthy place, you often don't have to filter other people out of your life, because they will do so for you. I refer to this as a "self-solving problem".

Hi Matt,
I leave for a conference in Israel on Wed, Sept 2. Have any time between now & then to upgrade some graphics?
-Clientname

Probably. It will depend on the nature of the upgrades. There are more demands on my time these days, so I will have to raise my rates somewhat, but it will still be proportional to the amount of time I expect it to take. What did you have in mind, specifically?

Hi Matt,
I find your response of raising your rates because of "more demands on your time”very disappointing. It sounds like you have taken on the attitude of big business (airlines)…meaning charge whatever the traffic will bear.
I am sorry, but this “attitude” is contrary to my thinking and I withdraw my request for your services.

This is why it's so valuable for me to put things out there from the outset, which will prevent going down a path that can only end poorly. In various areas of life, this could be "I don't take on new clients unless you pay me to have our first meeting", or it could be "I don't want to work more than 40 hours a week", or it could be "I'm not interested in monogamy and I have a vasectomy." Etc.

Unfortunately, not everyone who should self-select out of your life will do so. Some of them will stick around and complain about your boundaries, or exert other pressures.

There are two main categories of this, depending on the power imbalance. In one case, the person who wants to set boundaries is vulnerable to the pressuring party, as I was financially vulnerable when I originally met this client.

In the other case, the power imbalance is reversed. The pressuring party has too much to lose if the boundary-setting party asserts healthy boundaries. This is often expressed as a form of romantic love, in which the chemical attachment of bonding persists long after the problems of a relationship outweigh the benefits.

If you (as the boundary-setting party) have sufficient alternatives, and if the pressuring party has sufficient alternatives, they will filter themselves out of your life. Then the only way you will continue to have the wrong people in your life is if you fail to assert yourself calmly but firmly. Sometimes walking away is not failure-- it's success. You do not have to make every relationship work.

This is also why it's smart to empower other people with independence and alternatives. Seeking out power imbalances, or setting them up, generates more conflict than it resolves.

This week at a theater festival, I have heard several monologue actors, comedy musicians, and other performers put on shows about relationship structures, such as monogamy and polyamory. A recurring theme is talking about their relationships like they are in a hostage situation. They feel like because they are in love, they are forced (as if at gunpoint) to "have a relationship". But that vague phrase "have a relationship" means different things to the two of them. They are two people with two contradictory definitions of success. And then they wonder why they are miserable.

Unhappiness is simply not sustainable over the long term. Therefore, the bottom line in your choice of relationship structure is this: Will my partner's preferred relationship structure drain me more than it energizes me? Will my preferred relationship structure drain my partner more than it energizes her? For now, set aside words like "should" and "deserve", and "you're lucky to have this", because those words will not change the outcome that you get.

If a polyamorist dates a monogamist-- or a solo poly dates someone who loves cohabitation and promises-- or a fetishist dates a vanilla-- sometimes it can work out. But what makes the difference? One factor: they are not too drained. They don't end up dreading being around each other. It's that simple. If the compromise is too draining, then there's nothing you can do differently that will save your relationship. Don't adopt a pretense in order to have a good attitude, or to be sacrificial, or to be more enlightened. Those do not fill your emotional fuel tank. Those do not change what outcome you get.

The only thing that changes the outcome is this: "Is our compromise more energizing than draining? Or is it more draining than energizing?" For example, is my girlfriend getting enough of my time? Am I getting enough alone time to recharge? If so, then it's fine. Keep that process at the center of your decision-making about relationship structures.

You do NOT have to keep the relationship going at the expense of your needs, or your partner's needs. The well-being of both people in the relationship is more important than the continuation of the relationship.

I have gently ended some of my mis-matched relationships using this exact reasoning. "We're happier when we're friends. When we're lovers, you and I are obstacles for each other instead of opportunities. You're going to be angry at me all the time. It's impossible for me to be emotionally present in the relationship, because this relationship is bad for us. That will just toxify into mutual resentment. We tried to find an overlap between our needs. There isn't one. Your needs are important. Please find someone more equipped to meet them."

Edited to add: All the above is fine so far as it goes, but how do you tell? What are the signs to distinguish a "want" from a "need"? Unlike a want, going without a need is unsustainable. It looks like this:

You feel all the energy drain out of you over time.

You stop looking forward to being around your partner.

It becomes more and more difficult to be emotionally present.

Your resentment increases until it can no longer be suppressed, and leaks out in passive-aggression. Or aggressive-aggression.

Have there been times in your life when you experienced an emotion due to circumstances you were already in, and then someone spoke to you, and you retroactively perceived the words as the cause of that emotion? For examples:

Feel anger -> interpret words as demands.
Feel guilt -> interpret words as criticisms.
Feel fear -> interpret words as threats.
Feel shame -> interpret words as dismissal.

If your relationship style is adventurous, you're journeying down a road less traveled, with only vague maps. There's nothing wrong with spending your life in a hobbit hole, playing it safe, and doing what everyone has always done. But my friend, when you're an explorer, trying to reach as far as you can into the extents of what you and your partners can enjoy-- then... then. You're up in the high country.

Think of it this way. You and your partners (when you have partners) are in an adventuring party, climbing a mountain while tied to each other with ropes. Everybody has emotional needs and falls off the mountainside (anxiety, depression, reflexively feeling guilt for no reason). It happens to some more than others, but it happens to all of us. The rest of the party uses the ropes to pull them back up.

When they fall, your job is to pull. But here's the thing. When you're the one dangling from the end of the rope, your job is to try to get back on the mountain side. At least co-operate with your lovers' attempt to pull you up. Your lovers and metamours are not your therapists. They are there to achieve something together, not to be pulled down with you into the abyss. They chose you because you'll quest with them.

So here you are in this situation. You meet a person climbing alongside you, who seems like a good potential partner, the "PP". This person offers to clip a carabiner to yours, to connect to your rope chain.

So naturally you look at the other person who you would be connected to-- the potential metamour ("PM"). Let's say the PM wants to climb down to the foot of the mountain and stay in the hobbit hole in the base camp. (Did I mention there's nothing wrong with that?)

But the PM doesn't want to be in an adventuring party, or climb the mountain. PP is dragging PM along by the rope. Instead of climbing, PM is glaring stubbornly, with arms crossed, swinging from the end of the rope, deliberately stuck in an emotional freefall to punish PP. PP is doing all the work, and PM is pure liability. It turns out PP pressured PM into going on this adventure, and now PM is going to sabotage it.

If PM wants to go downward, PM can join the nearly-infinite number of people going that way. But PP has to choose. Go downward with PM, or upward with you? It can't be both.

You're responsible for your partners' emotional safety. Are you prepared to be responsible for the emotional safety of their partners? The bottom line is, don't let anyone clip a rope to you unless they un-clip from the non-climber. No reluctant polyamorists allowed. Do not get involved with someone who is pressuring their other partner to go along with it.

Reach out a hand when PP falters and slips. Keep pace and offer encouragement and tools. Just keep it clear to the PP that you're going upward, with or without them. No tug-of-war is allowed. If you're going to climb, your entire rope chain must be trying to go up. They can fall, but they must demonstrate that they're trying. The rule is "climbers only".

You cannot "motivate" someone to climb who never wanted to. The more you try, the closer you get to coercion and violations of consent.

When selecting a partner, there are very few things more important than a shared direction for the relationship itself. It doesn't need to be identical, but it must be reasonably similar. Most things can be compromised, but not goals for the relationship itself. If you are on incompatible paths, there is no compromise other than mutual failure.

First, find someone who will climb with you. Love is second. When you find love going in the opposite direction, never ask love to sacrifice it's journey of love, to go in your direction. Neither should you destroy the path that works for you to go on a path that's false for you. You'll only destroy both of your journeys. Exercise restraint, walk away, and find love going where you're going.

I liked the vast majority of 2013. I'm less happy than I was a year ago, but most things are cyclical. My circumstances are on an upward trajectory, overall.

I had career and relationship milestones this year. I got a job as a software developer, and as a result, started spending a lot of my time in Ann Arbor. Today I finally achieved a savings goal that I've had for nearly a decade, and will probably stay above it even after this month's projected expenses.

The main reason for me to select one job over another is how much control it will give me over where I spend my free time, and with whom. My last job, while menial, was down the street from the i3Detroit hacker space, where I do everything that I care about the most, and where most of the people who I care about tend to spend their time. That job set the gold standard. Working in my actual field will make it possible in the future to return to something close to those priorities, in a financially sustainable way.

With those priorities so vividly present in my mind, it is not possible for me to accidentally fall into a gilded cage of high expenses that keep me dependent on a high income. I know people who incur a terrible price with stress and boredom, to pay for isolated McMansions in a lonely gated community. I don't want that. My current path will vastly increase my options. I plan to keep living in densely populated urban centers full of activities with lots of great people.

Speaking of people, that brings me to the topic of relationships. In October, I posted this to Facebook:

A relationship of a year and a half has come to an amicable end. It was both of our great good fortune to be with each other. In that spirit of gratitude, our relationship transitions into warm friendship.

Here are the things that help me during a time like this. Your mileage may vary.

When I start every relationship, I say that it's a gift to each other, not an obligation. I say that if she needs to make new life decisions, and if I don't fit into that life in the same way, I won't make it difficult for her. Past experience says I'll follow through, so that's a comfort.

--I don't want to sugar-coat this. Like anything else worthwile, my relationship philosophy has tradeoffs. For every one to two years of ecstasy (the likes of which many people only fantasize), I experience a couple of weeks of withdrawal from dopamine, oxytocin and norepinephrine. I'll take that deal. During those weeks, I practice disguising my sobs as sneezes, in public. I accept the stormy emotional weather. I ride out the brain chemicals until they pass. If I had avoided loss, I would never have had such rewarding relationships to begin with.

During the infatuated period of "New Relationship Energy", when neither of us can conceive of a day when we don't fit into each other's lives in the same way, I talk about it anyway. The infatuated period is the most difficult time to lay the groundwork for the end of the relationship to be a warm and loving one. But that's when it most needs to be said.

With each goodbye, I remind myself that new connections and new loved ones have never followed far behind.

-- This prediction has already held true.

When we say goodbye, and I say we'll always be loved ones, I can look at the loved ones who still call, and keep in touch, and miss me, and look forward to visiting me, and I know that real love stories can have endings. Because that's how they can have sequels.

--I was reminded of this when I had a visit from J this month. (J lived with me during 2010 and 2011, predating the relationship which recently ended.) She spoke of her plans to try to move back to Michigan and start a video game company with some others. They were inspired by a game idea I had, and I'm really excited to be in touch with her more often.

With strong connections, and new resources, the groundwork is in place for 2014 to be an amazing year for me.

Well, it happened again. Someone sent me a job ad working as a graphic designer for a company that I really like, and I had a full-blown attack of something. A panic attack? A freak-out? I don't know what to call it. I would really like to get to the bottom of this weird phenomenon that happens to me when I read job ads.

I have a co-worker who keeps asking me why on earth, with all my talents, I'm doing unskilled labor for barely more than minimum wage. This is why.

The irony is that the job ad is for a website about intimate relationships. You know "That Guy" on dating sites? The one who messages every woman asking for sex right off the bat? That's what most job ads are like. This invites a comparison I have often made, between professions and intimate relationships, which I would like to go into in more detail.

A job ad feels exactly like being asked to have sex for money. I am not trying to be insulting and hyperbolic. I am quite serious about this, and have been for years, not just the heat of the moment. Professional job ads ask me to start a very serious capital-R Relationship with total strangers, instantaneously accelerating from a dead stop to full speed. This job ad even uses the word "passion". I am expected to feel passion in exchange for money. They want you to join their "family" (their word). I'm supposed to care deeply about crafting the identity of complete strangers!

It's like that scene in "Joe Vs. The Volcano" in which the limo driver pulls the car over, and says, "You say to me you want to go shopping. You want to buy clothes, but you don't know what kind. You leave that hanging in the air, like I'm going to fill in the blanks. Now that to me is like asking me who you are, and I don't know who you are. I don't want to know. It's taken me all my life to find out who I am and I am tired, now, you hear what I'm saying?"

This is why I don't date. Everybody hates dating, and for good reason. Dates are universally creepy and desperate, because it's an interview with a stranger, for the position of Most Important Person In Your Life. I find that insane. Instead of dating, I make friends, and after I've gotten to know someone, I see if she would like to gradually increase the involvement. That's why my love life is so successful. I don't think that translates to the workplace. In the job world, I'm not sure how I would develop a passionate vision for how someone else's website should look, then go and ask for a job.

I believe you will find the advice in this post useful, even if you are happily married. It may help you strengthen your relationship. I want you to avoid the wrong expectations about marriage. Don't assume a wedding changes a relationship for the better. You are making a cost-benefit tradeoff. If you think you are just trading up a relationship status for a better one, you will be unprepared for the costs, and will be unhappy.

But first, you want to know why you should read advice about marriage from a man who refuses to get married. Why? Because I'm good at marriage. I could make a marriage last forever if I wanted to. I was good at it right up to the point, nearly a decade ago, that my wife and I agreed we would rather be single than married, for reasons I am about to outline. It wasn't about any problem with each other. Our relationship, while stable, was in the wrong form. To this day, we still go out to dinner every couple of months.

Yet another pair of my friends is headed for divorce, and I just can't help but wonder how marriage made their relationship worse instead of better. I don't know which fate I dread more for them-- that their marriage will end? Or that it will last forever?

What is different between marriage and committed co-habitation? These differences come in two major types:
1. Benefits, which come from other people.
2. Stresses, which apply to the actual partners involved.

The only thing it does to the bride and groom is add more potential for stress to the actual relationship itself. Do you let yourself go? Take each other for granted? Fight over money now that you're on the hook for each other? I hear you saying that all these obstacles are surmountable, with communication and trust. True. But why add stresses unless you have to?

I can see clear legal, financial and contractual reasons why so many indisputably smart people get married. But all those benefits are about other people:
* throwing a party to celebrate your love in front of others.
* reducing how much others tax you.
* making others allow you to visit your children.
* getting past others to your lover's hospital bed.
* getting the respect and acknowledgement of others.

To you, those benefits may be worth the damage to your relationships. To me, they are not.

Marriage awkwardly combines romantic entanglements with legal and financial entanglements. It feels like "The party of the first part may kiss the party of the second part. I now declare you liable for damages." These two areas of life are already complicated enough, without worrying that breaking up with someone would mean I'd need to find a new place to live, and a new bank account, and split up possessions, and so forth.

Don't say marriage is more commitment. Commitment is a decision, and you can simply make that decision and tell your partner. You either trust your partner when they tell you that, or you don't. If you don't, you have a problem that is not fixed by shackling them. The best married couples understand the wedding improved their standing with their other loved ones, but didn't change anything between them that wasn't already there. Brides and grooms who get married in order to change themselves and each other are at exponentially higher risk of divorce from disappointed expectations. With marriage you'll just have to go to extra trouble to disentangle when it's over. But don't kid yourself; If you want out, you'll get out. It'll just be worse.

I'm not down on marriage for everybody! I love married people. (Frequently!) It may not be something I desire for myself, but I understand marriage makes many people feel good. It's a tradeoff, just like polyamory, or monogamy, or celibacy, or any other relationship form. You have to walk uphill against the challenges that each form brings. You choose them based on whether they put enough wind in your sails to surmount the obstacles.

Finally, we come to the most important reason not to get married: do you have a personality that buckles under to social pressure? I would like to point out that a lot of married people-- perhaps even the vast majority-- have not thought about the tradeoffs at all. Too many couples get married because of its symbolic value; to feel a connection to a long-standing tradition. Well, those people are going to feel a connection to Prozac in about seven years. I would like to encourage you to completely remove this reason from your list of priorities, if you possess the emotional wherewithal.

The problem is the default cultural script, followed unthinkingly. For instance:
* An unspoken assumption that you are each other's property and therefore can run each other's lives.
* Unrealistic expectations that marriage will change your partner.
* Or that they won't change.
* The announcement of monogamy that you wear on your finger.

Do you assume that you both have the same ideas about that? Even if you do, the people sitting in the audience at your wedding probably don't. Are you sleeping with them? No? Best not to get them involved.

So, if I want to celebrate my love, I would throw a party to do so, and not call it a wedding. But I won't. Frankly, as much as I love you all, it doesn't involve you. This may be the point that I lose many of you, because I know a lot of people like to put a couple photo as their profile pic on Facebook, and kiss in public, and really get the community involved in seeing them as an all-or-nothing unit. Too clingy for me, but whatever floats your boat. I'm not condemning, I'm just trying to help you not faceplant.

I'll just say this. Marriage is a stamp of approval by the community, that separates approved relationships from unapproved relationships. I take issue with that entire concept. How is it anyone's business to approve your most intimate, private, personal relationships? We let lawyers, legislators, clergy, and nosy family members in our bedrooms, in exchange for access to the approved group. There should be no formal, official approval. The government should not be in the business of sanctioning our private lives. You can join a church if you want that.

So all the drawbacks go to you and your partner, and all the advantages go to other people by giving them control over the shape of your private life. What are the benefits? Access to your kids, a tax break, getting on your partner's health insurance, getting to visit them in the hospital. Do you think society is doing you a favor with this trade? I leave you with this thought: How whipped are you, that you think you shouldn't have that already?

It was pointed out to me that Kit's memorial entry is friend-locked. I've stopped reading me and Reesa's old IM logs and leaking from the eyes long enough that I have some of my own things to say.

Reesa was fascinating; and she was interested in interesting things.

I don't talk much about past or present partners; but anyone with whom I have privately discussed Reesa knows that I pretty much glow about her, and that I'm not just praising her now because of the circumstances. She gave of herself with an generosity, courage, and forthrightness that served as a positive role model for me when I needed one. I'm not saying she was perfect. But her flaws never really did much to me. My trajectory through her life was caught in the spotlight beam of brilliance. She just didn't seem to settle for anything, even if everybody in the world thought you would obviously fail. She was an example of how the whole world could be wrong about that. The whole world was wrong about a lot of things. Whether it be in her entrepreneurship, her relationship style, her resourcefulness, her innovative ideas, and her courage in all areas of life; I admired that, and admiration has always been an aphrodisiac to me.

I never imagined a world without Reesa in it. I really thought she had it licked for the last time, and was out of the woods. I'm proud to have introduced her to her husband Nathan Elliott, and my thoughts go out to him at this time.

No one gets in line to be your next un-enthusiasm!

I'm watching "Chaos Theory" and I haven't been this frustrated since I watched "Chasing Amy".

A woman in labor crashed her car driving to the hospital. A stranger drove her the rest of the way. The hospital assumed he was the husband, and made him sign paperwork. The pregnant woman ran out on her child. The hospital called his wife, assuming she was the mother, and demanding she return. The wife instantly accepted the idea he had lived a double life and had a baby with another woman.

Let's make this perfectly clear. He was a model family man, reliable to a fault, not giving her the slightest reason to withhold the benefit of the doubt. After years of this reliability, the person who was supposed to be closest to him believed a ludicrous implausibility, threw things at him, kicked him out of the house, and wouldn't let him explain.

Stupid plot devices are par for the course for a dumb movie. If it had happened in real life, I would be livid, but since it is fiction, it is merely annoying. What drives me to pace back and forth is that the audience is expected to sympathize and share his desire to save the relationship, to sustain our interest in the plot. I've seen enough movies like this to know there is an audience for them. They would like to see them reunited. It is supposed to be normal and desirable for the person closest to you to throw things at you. You are supposed to clutch desperately at what little you have. A person who is capable of throwing things at you-- ever-- is the kind of person who can be in a relationship? That is simply unthinkable. He should try to have the slimmest iota of standards, erase all value that she holds to him, file for divorce the next morning, spend the next several months trying to dry his tears, and NOT TAKE HER PHONE CALLS UNTIL SHE GIVES UP. End of movie.

I mean for Pete's sake, she threw a pot at him. Once you're at that point, is there anything left to save? Done. Walk. Over.

I continued watching only to see if the film would ever address the real underlying conflict, which is the utter hollowness and worthlessness of the connection between them.

It does not. (He does get mad, though. You wouldn't believe what it took to finally get him mad.) Eventually they all just ignored and glossed over all the conflict, instead of making anything better.

I get worked up like this when watching pretty much any movie about relationships. I wish Dan Savage wrote screenplays. I want a movie titled DTMFA.

I have said goodbye to all my relationships in recent months, as they start new lives with exciting new careers thousands of miles away. Relationships are an area of life in which I'm pretty satisfied with my results. While it is particularly on my mind, I thought I'd just put down some thoughts. These are the philosophies to which I credit my lack of drama and turmoil.

( Read more... )

I like my interest groups full of women, and I can't imagine chasing them out of the group which is supposed to be about the common interests, not a dating site. I want an environment in which they can be confident that they are meeting friends, not getting a lot of pressure or big expectations.

So you can predict my growing shock, alarm, disgust, and facepalm, at hearing about guys making unwanted advances, and even sexual assault, toward women at OSCON, OLS, or other open source related events. It's wrong to not take no for an answer. It's unthinkable to get all handsy, and I wouldn't tolerate it if I saw it happen. I would make sure they get kicked out. I keep worrying if it's happening at Penguicon and no one's reporting it.

For a geek event, Penguicon has an unusually large percentage of women attendees, organizers, and presenters (on all topics, not just tech). Our attendance has got to be somewhere between one third to one half women. They are just as passionate about the convention. If that went away, it would no longer be anything like the con we have come to know. The shocking behavior at other events related to open source is sparking an organized backlash which is long overdue. Unfortunately I think we're going to get lumped in. We already have a harassment policy, requiring that you leave people alone when they ask you to, forbidding touching without express permission, and promising the victims of abuse that the con will back them up. But I wouldn't mind expanding the policy.

The really cool Geek Feminism Wiki has a boilerplate Tech Conference Anti-Harassment Policy Document. It's really good. I would only make three changes for our circumstances.

( Switch 'safe feeling' to 'comfortable environment'. )

( Remove the broad, nearly-meaningless 'offensive'. )

( Modify the prohibition on sexual images. )

In addition to the recommendations for the policy, I have an open question and an impassioned plea:

( An open question. )

( An impassioned plea to men looking for a woman. )

A poster in Ops at U-Con advertised seeking geeks to be interviewed, for an honors thesis about geek culture. So I emailed Rachel Yung at

and signed up. If you self-identify as a geek, Rachel wishes you to do likewise. Here is a transcript of the interview.
( Read more... )

I do not have Asperger's Syndrome, but occasionally I have an Autistic Moment. Several times in my life, I have mistaken the phrase "I don't know how I can be more clear" for a sincere request for a tutorial. I had to learn to catch myself before it is too late.

Is there a lull in flamewars, or am I just not on the right forums anymore? Summer time, and the living is easy. So I choose now to post this. There's very little point in pointing out essays like this to anyone who is currently hunkered down in a fortress of defensiveness. They'd just feel you're making up rules to impose; and will promptly ask who died and made you king.

There is a new essay by Mark Rosenfelder on The Zompist, "On Arguing." Even if you're conflict-averse, you will see arguing in your life. If it turns ugly, "On Arguing" will help you judge the appropriate levels of social consequences to mete out for what you had to sit through.

Sample: "It’s the exaggeration and the malice that distinguish a real straw man from an honest misunderstanding."

Another useful essay on this topic is "How to Disagree" by Paul Graham.

Somehow, my desire for sincere work does not rule out performing the occasional wedding.

A young military couple were being sent overseas, and arranged at the last minute to be married by a Justice of the Peace so as to be less likely to be separated by the military. Upon hearing this plan, their families asked to be allowed to put together a real wedding they could attend with all the trappings. The Justice of the Peace would already have done the legal work; the following ceremony would be for show. The families had to work fast. No clergy could be persuaded to perform a ceremony on the Fourth of July with twenty-four hours notice. They went hunting for someone, anyone, who would know how to make the service look and sound traditionally authentic.

Their friend-of-a-friend Tomak thought of me, mostly because I perform the Coffee Ritual at Penguicon. I ritualistically grind, brew, and serve coffee, and parody the High Church singsong cadence, while wearing a Pope costume with a Starbucks logo on the hat.

Tomak: "You're a Bible college dropout, right?"
Me: "I graduated, actually."
Tomak: "Rock on!"
Me: "With an art degree."
Tomak: "Good enough."

When asked what denomination I was, Tomak told them "he was trained Baptist, but now he's more ... Unitarian Universalist." That's one way to put it. I should remember that one.

Jen worked very hard Friday night to put together a setting complete with an altar, unity candles, a humongous Bible with side-by-side English and Greek translations, and a lovely printed manuscript of the ceremony for a memento. She wrote the ceremony, and pasted a printed copy inside a black notebook for me to glance at, since I lacked any time to memorize my lines. I wore a black suit and white turtleneck.

I would like to live in a world in which prayer and encouragement is never a paid acting performance. I didn't want to encourage a young couple that they are doing the right thing, when every evidence available to statistics and brain science tells us they are most certainly not. But it's their lives to live as they choose.

I was worried that I would feel terrible; that it would be the most desperate and grasping thing I've ever done for money. In other words, I felt like one must feel when preparing to appear in one's first porn film. If porn stars can do it, I have no cause to demur. Yes, I said; I will draw from porn stars' strength of determination, learn from their example, and set aside these silly qualms. I will not Hoekstra.

I did not dwell on it while it was happening. I just went with the flow. I kept my mouth shut as much as possible before and after. I was thanked and praised to the skies by clients and their families who were thrilled to tears. Then I hopped in the getaway car and put it out of my mind for several days. The back of my mind is constantly aware that there is video, which might appear on YouTube and come back to haunt me. If I make a habit of presiding over the downfall of beautiful relationships every day, I would experience emotional corrosion quickly. I take comfort that perhaps weary porn stars and reluctant wedding officiants might be the Yin to each other's Yang on some weird karmic scale.

I've been writing this for more than a year, and I think I should post it now.

For those who don't know, polyamory is responsible non-monogamy. It's open and honest multiple relationships.

I can't abide secrets and lies in intimate relationships. I only have experienced about a thimbleful of jealousy in my life, and I prefer to avoid having to put up with jealousy (although I take the good with the bad, so I'm not completely intolerant of it). I don't see monogamy as much of a safeguard against risk. So, I gravitate toward poly.

( Sharing )

( Does Polyamory Work? )

( Be Careful How You Define Success )

( Computer Network Metaphor )

( Primaries and Secondaries )

( Natural Selection Metaphor )

( Conclusion )

Page Summary

March 2025

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C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

Criticism Is The Only Known Antidote To Error

Entries tagged with relationships

OK, Socko

Part I.

Part II.

Part III.

Part IV.

Part IV.

Boundaries VS Connections, People Pleasing VS Inflexibility

Poly, Polyamory, and Polynesia

Which Problems Can Be Made Self-Solving?

Your Choice Of Relationship Structure Is Not A Hostage Situation

Retroactive Interpretation

Climbers Only

Wrapup of 2013

Dating and Job Interviews

Problems with the Institution of Marriage

Reesa Brown

PROTIP

I Dislike Films About Relationship Problems

Relationships, Change, and Independence

Tech Conference Anti-Harassment Boilerplate Policy

Geek Culture Honors Thesis Interview

Autistic Moment

New Essay on The Zompist: 'On Arguing'

The Unlikeliest Wedding Officiant

Polyamory

Page Summary

March 2025

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