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moominmuppetThe actual question and discussion is here
And these were my semi-tangential thoughts on the topic (moved here and reformatted a bit to avoid clogging the post if they generate discussion, since they're not really on-topic).
Part of the original premise was that people, especially under stress, tend to revert to wanting one person to be there for them.
I don't particularly find that to be true in my life, and it got me thinking about the ways in which I conceptualize emotional connection. I was originally talking about it in a poly forum, and that colored the way I described things, perhaps inaccurately. What I'm talking about isn't mono-poly stuff at all really, although the way I think about these sorts of things certainly feeds into my decision to be poly in regards to romantic/sexual relationships. I think I'd characterize it as thinking more in terms of dyads or more in terms of webs, instead. My thought patterns and mental mappings of the world are heavily skewed toward webs, and away from dyads as discrete entities (I tend to see* dyads as components of webs).
In regards to distributing vs centralizing one's emotional support
This is where a generally 'poly' approach actually suits me better. I tend to think about relationships in sort of a web. When someone I care about needs to lean on me, I can lean a bit on several other connections for the additional support I might need in doing that. When I need support, rather than putting that entire load on one person, and risk breaking them in the process, I can spread it out based on who has time, energy, and the particular emotional skills that suit the problem. This applies both in regards to friendships and involvements, but the fact that I have additional intimate sexual/romantic involvements suits that especially well, and broadens the applicable territory beyond where platonic friendships would extend.
I do tend to fall into dyadic thought patterns in regards to wanting to 'share' everything in my head with one other person, to have someone know me that well, but I don't tend to in regards to support stuff in the way the original post references (at least how I'm reading it).
_______________
I'm not sure that it's a monogamy issue so much as an intimacy issue though, where I want someone to be 'informationally intimate' with.
That's almost exactly what I said to one of my loves when we were talking about this:
My response (all bunched together) to whether this was a mono-poly distinction or not:
No... Just that it takes longer to develop that with multiple people, I guess. Trying to remember who I talked to about what, that kind of thing. Not even necessarily a mono-poly thing precisely.
If I have one best friend, and am not really close to anyone else, then they're the person who ends up hearing everything about me. That's a big load on them, but it also gives me one centralized 'store' of knowledge about me. Which is reassuring, especially when I'm feeling overwhelmed by the world. When I have multiple friends, even if I would trust all of them with piece of info A, I may only have talked about it with some of them, because it didn't happen to come up with the others yet. So, depending on which conversations I have with whom, when, and what's on my mind, different people end up with different, and non-complete, sets of info about me. But I don't really want to only ever talk to one person, [even if it sometimes sounds appealing for those reasons.] And in the long run, I get much more out of those multiple people having a substantial amount of perspective on me, because I get feedback from different perspectives. And I'm less likely to feel abandoned or horribly hurt if one particular person isn't available to me for some reason or another. I may be bummed, but it's not scary and isolating in the same way as if there were no one else I could reach out to. LJ's handy that way, since it makes it easier for me to share information with multiple people at once, when I have no trust-based reason not to.
* And I really do mean "see" -- this is one of those situations where I think about concepts in a heavily visual/spatial way. Someone I care about hurting looks like a dark/heavy spot on the web, and my general desire is to add energy to my line to them, to help buoy them up some. I don't see it as a discrete process, though. Worrying about someone else brings me down a touch, and some load-balancing happens with the rest of my connections, in some form or another, to help alleviate that effect. And happy stuff happening for any one person tends to have echo effects in converse ways. Shared joy/shared sorrow, and all that.
And I think part of the reason that LJ suits me so well most of the time is that it's designed for these sorts of interactions. It's highly web-based (no pun intended). Even very casual acquaintances end up contributing to that load-balancing effect in relatively substantial ways, and I love seeing and feeling that happen. It also allows me to get support for some things in ways that, rather than placing a heavy burden on one person, place a relatively minor burden over a wide spectrum. I very definitely feel that effect when I'm depressed, for example. Many people taking a few seconds to post "*hugs*" or something similar doesn't remove my need for a shoulder to cry on, but it certainly changes how much of that I need, and how bad it's going to be to go without it for a while, if I need to. And it makes it much easier, in some ways, to keep long-distance but trusted friends up-to-date on what's going on with me, such that when I'm actually in need of support I don't have to do so much updating as to make it an unfeasible prospect.
And I realize that I'm really talking about one aspect of friendship (the sharing of burdens) to the exclusion of all the other wonderful aspects of it, and I don't mean to imply that it's the sole reason for friendship to exist, or even the most central factor in many, many friendships. In fact, in my opinion there's probably something worth questioning about a relationship that's based solely or primarily on the sharing of burdens rather than joy in each other's company. But, that's a different post.
And these were my semi-tangential thoughts on the topic (moved here and reformatted a bit to avoid clogging the post if they generate discussion, since they're not really on-topic).
Part of the original premise was that people, especially under stress, tend to revert to wanting one person to be there for them.
I don't particularly find that to be true in my life, and it got me thinking about the ways in which I conceptualize emotional connection. I was originally talking about it in a poly forum, and that colored the way I described things, perhaps inaccurately. What I'm talking about isn't mono-poly stuff at all really, although the way I think about these sorts of things certainly feeds into my decision to be poly in regards to romantic/sexual relationships. I think I'd characterize it as thinking more in terms of dyads or more in terms of webs, instead. My thought patterns and mental mappings of the world are heavily skewed toward webs, and away from dyads as discrete entities (I tend to see* dyads as components of webs).
In regards to distributing vs centralizing one's emotional support
This is where a generally 'poly' approach actually suits me better. I tend to think about relationships in sort of a web. When someone I care about needs to lean on me, I can lean a bit on several other connections for the additional support I might need in doing that. When I need support, rather than putting that entire load on one person, and risk breaking them in the process, I can spread it out based on who has time, energy, and the particular emotional skills that suit the problem. This applies both in regards to friendships and involvements, but the fact that I have additional intimate sexual/romantic involvements suits that especially well, and broadens the applicable territory beyond where platonic friendships would extend.
I do tend to fall into dyadic thought patterns in regards to wanting to 'share' everything in my head with one other person, to have someone know me that well, but I don't tend to in regards to support stuff in the way the original post references (at least how I'm reading it).
_______________
I'm not sure that it's a monogamy issue so much as an intimacy issue though, where I want someone to be 'informationally intimate' with.
That's almost exactly what I said to one of my loves when we were talking about this:
My response (all bunched together) to whether this was a mono-poly distinction or not:
No... Just that it takes longer to develop that with multiple people, I guess. Trying to remember who I talked to about what, that kind of thing. Not even necessarily a mono-poly thing precisely.
If I have one best friend, and am not really close to anyone else, then they're the person who ends up hearing everything about me. That's a big load on them, but it also gives me one centralized 'store' of knowledge about me. Which is reassuring, especially when I'm feeling overwhelmed by the world. When I have multiple friends, even if I would trust all of them with piece of info A, I may only have talked about it with some of them, because it didn't happen to come up with the others yet. So, depending on which conversations I have with whom, when, and what's on my mind, different people end up with different, and non-complete, sets of info about me. But I don't really want to only ever talk to one person, [even if it sometimes sounds appealing for those reasons.] And in the long run, I get much more out of those multiple people having a substantial amount of perspective on me, because I get feedback from different perspectives. And I'm less likely to feel abandoned or horribly hurt if one particular person isn't available to me for some reason or another. I may be bummed, but it's not scary and isolating in the same way as if there were no one else I could reach out to. LJ's handy that way, since it makes it easier for me to share information with multiple people at once, when I have no trust-based reason not to.
* And I really do mean "see" -- this is one of those situations where I think about concepts in a heavily visual/spatial way. Someone I care about hurting looks like a dark/heavy spot on the web, and my general desire is to add energy to my line to them, to help buoy them up some. I don't see it as a discrete process, though. Worrying about someone else brings me down a touch, and some load-balancing happens with the rest of my connections, in some form or another, to help alleviate that effect. And happy stuff happening for any one person tends to have echo effects in converse ways. Shared joy/shared sorrow, and all that.
And I think part of the reason that LJ suits me so well most of the time is that it's designed for these sorts of interactions. It's highly web-based (no pun intended). Even very casual acquaintances end up contributing to that load-balancing effect in relatively substantial ways, and I love seeing and feeling that happen. It also allows me to get support for some things in ways that, rather than placing a heavy burden on one person, place a relatively minor burden over a wide spectrum. I very definitely feel that effect when I'm depressed, for example. Many people taking a few seconds to post "*hugs*" or something similar doesn't remove my need for a shoulder to cry on, but it certainly changes how much of that I need, and how bad it's going to be to go without it for a while, if I need to. And it makes it much easier, in some ways, to keep long-distance but trusted friends up-to-date on what's going on with me, such that when I'm actually in need of support I don't have to do so much updating as to make it an unfeasible prospect.
And I realize that I'm really talking about one aspect of friendship (the sharing of burdens) to the exclusion of all the other wonderful aspects of it, and I don't mean to imply that it's the sole reason for friendship to exist, or even the most central factor in many, many friendships. In fact, in my opinion there's probably something worth questioning about a relationship that's based solely or primarily on the sharing of burdens rather than joy in each other's company. But, that's a different post.
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Date: 2003-12-16 02:34 pm (UTC)I don't particularly find that to be true in my life,
Nor do it. When I am troubled, I reach out to everyone who I consider to be a close friend (a fairly small list, but except when my life has deeply sucked, it's always been more than one person). I also tend to seek advice based upon someone's interests and expertise.
My thought patterns and mental mappings of the world are heavily skewed toward webs, and away from dyads as discrete entities (I tend to see* dyads as components of webs).
Yes! This is part of the reason I work to attempt make certain that all of the people I am seriously close to are close to one another.