Recently someone told me on social media that he doesn’t care about my sex life and no one does. I hope he’s enjoying my land-use commentary.
Sorry I haven’t updated in a few days. I have been working on a piece for a new publication called the New Modality. It’s about relationship anarchy, so if you have any thoughts on or experiences with RA, please reach out. It’s one of those things that I don’t understand and would like to so I’m writing an article about it to force myself to learn and bring you along with me in my journey of understanding.
At the end of the day, weirdly, I think I still want something very traditional. I want hierarchy. A partner. I like to know what’s expected of me and what I can expect. Which, unfortunately, can still be unclear even if you’re “primary partners” with someone. That phrase can mean so many different things. And to the extent that relationship anarchy is just a way to force people to articulate exactly what they owe each other and agree to, that seems useful.
It was interesting to learn that actually what usually happens in “non-hierarchical” relationships is there is a kind of ordering and ranking, and the relationship that’s been around the longest and has the most practical entanglements like living together, sharing finances, and raising children, is usually the closest. Which seems fine and good to me. As long as everyone’s honest. Interestingly, according to the study linked above, it turns out in poly relationships where partners are described as co-primary with each other, affection, etc. really is more evenly divided than in hierarchical poly relationships. But relationships where no one is primary looked more like hierarchical poly relationships. So maybe people describe themselves as less hierarchical than they turn out to be.
Anyway, I don’t know to what extent my upbringing can explain my desire for one single life partner. If I abandon monogamy as an ideal, couldn’t I just rewrite the whole expectation of lifelong love with one person? And I wouldn’t say I expect it to happen for myself. But I still want it, for whatever reason. And I’m curious about people who genuinely don’t. So, relationship anarchists, get at me.
I also told my dad about my breakup and he told me I’m beautiful and deep and can talk about a variety of things and I’m going to need someone who can keep up with me and there aren’t many who can and that it’s definitely not my fault I’m 34 and single. Dads are the fucking best.
Thanks for being awesome.
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