Sandbox Romants: Wooing and Problems

lol tbf he was 18 and not 15 or something

We were friends after that for a couple years but in a sibling sorta way. He did say that my studio apartment was so "adult punk rock". Oh Alex.

wow this thread blew up.

ZS if you haven't had it already i think you are due for a massive bender that involves smashing beer bottles at some point (preferably against some rocks/not on people). you deserve to be angrier!

(i always offer to go down to the docks and chuck rocks into the water with heartbroken friends. that helps too and is slightly less destructive.)

awwww

throw beer bottles at sailors, win win

i don't think it'll ever be in me to have a rigid morality of relationships, not that i'm criticising you guys that do but it's been a unpredictable sea of grey to me for most of my adult life

i don't think it'll ever be in me to have a rigid morality of relationships

not in a global sense, sure, but I think it's vitally important w/in your actual relationship to know what, for you (& partner(s)) is absolutely okay and absolutely not

not universal rules, tbh, just on a relationship by relationship basis ito 'here's how this'll work for us' iykwim

hmmm i am perhaps not best placed to talk about this right now, and i guess i'm musing out loud. and yeah honesty is important sure but

i dunno how to explain...perhaps to say that the worst thing a partner cd do to me wd be a long way from a sexual infidelity...and that something about "no grey areas" always makes me antsy?

not willing that as a universal law or anything. contracts weird me out a bit i think.

like i shd probly get to the bottom of this unsettlement at some time in my life ho ho

http://designyoutrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/romanticintent2.jpg

yeah this. "cheating" feels like an odd word seeing as it is mostly game related and then the whole "where is this relationship going?" 5-year plan stuff. all odd legalistic things - at least linguistically - that rub up wrong against some kind of "free meeting of hearts and minds" crap in my head. i think i might equate rules with death somehow tho

i mean that form is a joke but it has some kind of truth about the potential for commodification of relationships (broadest sense) in it

perfectly aware that these are not popular or possibly sensible concerns here

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

those kind of questions, generally, are odd to me i think. and sort of presumptuous and sort of grave-tempting and sort of mildly saddening

tbh i feel the same about "what do you want for your tea tonight?" too

i don't think those ideas are as uncommon as you're painting, julie, tho i've seen you express the gist of them before and maybe they're more front and centre for you i dunno. But the idea/worry that 'let's not tie our future selves down' isn't unique in itself

tho many ppl offset those concerns against desperation and fear of dying alone/a virgin y'know the usual stuff

yeah but it's something slightly other than that. lots of people of course don't want to "settle" but it isn't an endless shopping spree i'm entertaining here, nor really a beatnik "don't change me". which is why i'm no good at putting this into words really, these are feelings in my gut or my head or both. quite possibly some kind of super-solipsism, but it's easy to write off other's experiences (and yr own) in that way.

realism says that so much of the language of our relationships is socio-economic because that's the world we inhabit and that's okay because you can't not inhabit that world but something else that people sometimes vaguely suggest or guess at wants love - or whatever - to be some moment outside of moments? outside of the whole sordid business of being entities within a historical, social moment - or the opposite, maybe - to be so wired into the world that social structures shatter or evaporate, temporarily, somehow

tbrr a good part of our aversion (not strong, tbh) to getting married is a kind of 'things change ppl change and forever is a mighty long time for two ppl to be throwing expensive promises at', which may or may not be a similar type of sentiment? But it comes, i kinda hope on my good days, from a place of trust in each other that doesn't feel the need to lock anything down 'while it's going well'. I realise these may not, as you say, be the normal angles of approach.

xp crushing the butterfly under the cartwheel, kind of thing? I kinda see it, but don't want to presume to really get where you're at either.

think overthinking is a bad idea in a lot of scenarios tbh, and silence is undervalued which is rich coming from an internet gobshite

i am increasingly incapable of really feeling judgements about behaviour tho, except a sadness or slightly frightened empathy. i keep asking myself what does approval or disapproval do?

this isn't especially autobiographical re: recent events btw, or very very tangentially if so

can say with some measure of certainty that the odds of me meeting a co-ghost at some point in the future look fucken slim tho :)

oh yeah, i don't *feel* judgement except in terms of its delicious internal effect on myself, which tbf is all any of us can vouch for ito emotion anyway right

lol i dunno what was in those bath salts but it's good stuff

lol

i like the idea of a delicious internal effect. actually sometimes judgement feels pleasant when there's a group of you in agreement round a bar that something is a terrible thing

Well, I'm not a moral relativist in much of anything – least of all a relationship - but I do believe that there are situational considerations that might exempt certain activities from scrutiny, provided both parties were consenting adults.

who are you tellin i'm irish ffs

xp to nv that is

communal negative judgement is a basic social bedrock but that may be another thread

2012 GOP Presidential Campaign -- "This individual's going to accuse me of an affair for an extended period of time."

i'm not really a relativist i think i'm an abolitionist at this stage.

i think one time i signed up for a set of ideas that seemed rational and necessary and realistic but i think maybe they won't work for me so now i'll have to inhabit some strange near-vacuum elsewhere and see how that works out

yeah a lot of the evolutionary psychology guys are big on the idea of morality as group protection mechanism. feel like it cheapens morality and cavemen tbh

i feel evo psych people cheapen science, and i condemn them and judge them negatively

can i get a whut whut

well sure, we all *like* to think we're above our hard-wiring.......

just realised i'm quite comfortable judging the student cunts next door who couldn't give a fuck about anybody living nearby who might have jobs or sleeping children or just not enjoy the sound of bellowing twats at 3 in the morning

hooray for sparks of humanity

within our own personal boundaries we're all nimby tory landowners

nah it's the inconsiderateness that rankles tbh, i can sleep thru owt

but to avoid derailing, i think partly what i was thinking in the first place was as banal as "i would be very uncomfortable judging what goes on between other people with the obvious exception of abuse etc."

either that or my brain is ready to go lie down

i find that going over and politely but firmly executing them the first night is the best policy

have toyed with petrol thru letterbox but this is a poor tactic when you live in a terrace

re judging- it's mathematical though, the importance of yr opinion/judgementalism is inversely proportional to yr distance from the matter- so why bother moderating it, as long as it's irrelevant (and more often than not internal, as we said)

yeah we made that very joke about my neighbours last year on some thread re:firing them out

for me, the point isn't that a person changes or boundaries or whatever - it's just honesty and ... plain old courtesy, i guess? like, you might commit to a monogamous relationship w/someone and then meet someone you want to pursue in some way etc., the black/white for me is that you would talk to your partner first, have some kind of honest discussion, not just go off and do whatever you feel like doing.

that's plain enough!

But the dishonesty is in committing in the first place, then, iykwim?

ZS if you haven't had it already i think you are due for a massive bender

i've been on three-fifth of a bender for the past week or so (2 weeks?), staying up til 3am every night drinking by myself, miraculously slogging my way through work the next day, doing a shitty job at everything, enduring loud and revolting stomach cacophonies. i probably need to just go ahead and step shit up all the way, hit rock bottom and bounce back up extra hard.

also, and here's where a bunch of you will probably vehemently disagree with me, but all my ex did was kiss a dude. she apparently flirted with him all night at a party and then had a big kiss outside, probably while robins and butterflies flew around their heads whistling love songs and forming hearts and shit. in the bounds of our relationship of 7+ years, this definitely constituted "cheating". and for sure, if i ever would have flirted with a girl all night at a party, let alone kissed her or got it on as "all night long" blasted on the speakers, i seriously think she would have responded violently and probably broken my nose or something. but yeah, i'm sure to others the fact that she kissed someone wouldn't be a big deal.