So I’ll just leave some bits here. For me the quote that started to conceptualize romantic love was “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” from Robert Heinlein. But really that’s not the whole story. Just like we have many different kinds of non-romantic love (kids, candy, outdoors, parents, friends, motorcycles, precision instruments, algorithms) we also experience many different kinds of romantic love. We often talk about “the love of your life” and “the one” as the ultimate version of romantic love. But it’s not an escalator: https://offescalator.com/what-escalator/. And if you follow this model of relationships, you quickly arrive at the concept of casual love: https://www.carsieblanton.com/blog/post/82149148832/casual-l....
The idea that you can say “I love you” to a partner 2 weeks into a relationship and not place any expectations on it being actionable is very freeing. I have experienced it myself several times on both ends. It is a wonderful thing. Remember folks, you don’t have to love every partner you have. And if you love them, you don’t have to do anything about it. You can love for a week or a lifetime, you can love for a lifetime and never get serious. You can get serious but not married. The choices are yours and many options exist for all kinds different relationship types.
Edit: if anyone wants to nerd out about non-monogamous/polyamorous relationships, I am happy to talk about it.
I understand "casual love" poorly, but imagining myself engaging in it, I picture some chaotic asteroid collision chain reaction. The asteroids are people, and the collisions are the hook-ups. The hook-ups must be episodes of sex mixed with the psychological trauma of infatuation ("falling in love"?).
It sounds horrifying and disruptive...
But, to me, even sex in itself would be unappealing so casually; the only thing that can overcome the surface-level, material ugliness of other humans enough to make me want to have sex with them is long-term familiarity and mutual interest, and that sounds pretty anathema to "leave anytime, no expectations lol". :p So I guess the typical relationship escalator is what feels most natural to me.
But then the poly model probably assures you a LOT more sex and relationships than mine, which requires meeting naturally and then building guarded, incremental trust, which, due to a mix of how our society is structured (there's HEAVY sexual partitioning of interests, hobbies, and careers) and my personality (I only engage with the most partitioned elements of society), ostensibly never happens for me. :D
I totally understand where you are coming from. Poly isn’t for everyone, casual love isn’t for everyone, and casual sex is most definitely not for everyone. Not engaging in those things is a valid choice, and if that is right for you, it is right for you.
I will say that casual love != casual sex. You can experience casual love without any sex at all. You can form romantic relationships that do not involve sex. While I personally am not wired that way I have plenty of poly friends who are. The longest running podcast on the subject, Polyamory Weekly, to this day uses the slogan “it’s not all about the sex.”
Casual sex for a lot of people is a much less satisfying experience than sex in a long term relationship. But to be fair, let’s acknowledge that loads of committed relationships also suffer in the bedroom, so it’s not all great there either. Ultimately it depends on you and your preferences/needs. And of course on the partners you select.
Empirically I can say that I experience love towards a partner about 1/10 times or so. Though my sample size is not actually all that great because while poly, I am very very selective. This may be surprising but the reality is that poly doesn’t mean “screw everything with two legs.” It just means that if someone does interest you, you are free to explore that however you want, and your partners have the same freedom. Whether you choose to have one anchor partner who you share your home life with, or you do “solo poly” where you live alone and have multiple partners with whom you have no plans to ever progress on the escalator is 100% up to you. A couple of people I know actually identify as monogamous, while practicing Polyamory through their partner being poly. Not my cup of tea, but that seems right for them.
Not the person you are asking but if you think about it, sex is weird, gross, and makes you very vulnerable. For some that is offset by it being wonderful and hot and sexy, while for others it takes more to go past the reality of it. That’s why the asexual spectrum is a thing: not everyone is down with getting down. And because as a society we expect sex and sexual attraction to be the norm, people on that spectrum may not always be out about it.
Not saying the other poster is on that spectrum, just pointing out that many different brain configuration exist, with some going “all the sex” all the way to “sex? No thanks.”
My guess is that it is slightly higher than that because often times the label “asexual” is applied to people who have 0 interest in sex, while others experience a reduced emphasis on sex, hence the “spectrum” part. Also it isn’t something people openly admit to it, so it suffers from the same problem as trying to quantify the numbers of people who identify as bisexual.
And then there's people who the label could be applied to, but spent much of their lives trying to conform to more socially acceptable ideas about sexuality.
Heh. Heinlein wasn’t actually how I came into it, but because his writing was always in the back of my mind, it made it a lot easier to accept. I fell into it the way one falls into a puddle: by a series of mishaps. And those links/songs are excellent, thank you!
I am glad someone bought up Heinlein. He has certainly been a very important influence in my life.
I don’t like the label of ‘poly’ and I don’t understand the definition of ‘love’ as we know it in society..and I have a dim view of marriage as a social construct as I see how it can be regressive for women(I am female).
That Heinlein quote is one of my favorites. I embrace it better as something that causes a tumble and release of brain chemicals in a certain synchronized way.
I also wonder if entheogens can help human beings grasp the concept of love and guide them to be emotionally non violent(to themselves and to those they love) about it.
Perhaps we will all love each other universally if someone added ‘shrooms in our tap water.(I was being facetious! Altho..it is more of an absurd seed for maybe a weird tales story contribution.)
I kind of agree. I got into an argument with an ex once about how love is just brain chemistry. She didn’t like that because that made it not romantic. I think it makes it more romantic: out of basic biochemistry you get “this insane feeling!”
I do think we would all be nicer to each other and ourselves if we didn’t strive to make our partners our “everything”. It isn’t the solution to all our problems but it is a solution to a problem that plagued many marriages/long term relationships. If it wasn’t, cheating and marriage counselors wouldn’t be as common as they are.
I don’t really like labels in general (I prefer to use verbs than nouns if I use one), but poly is what I have been doing for about 7 years now. In addition I have realized that other forms of non-monogamy fit me as well. Love can be felt more or less in those than in poly.
Relationships run into the danger of co-dependency if young people have baggage while transitioning into adulthood. In a lot of ways, the baggage can be multi generational and gets heavier.
I don’t know the answer but monogamous relationship is suitable when children enter the picture. It’s a whole different ball game now.
Digressing a bit, I am fond of beckoning the monogamous nature of our bird friends. It is very expensive for them to gather resources to raise their young(aka perpetuate their species) and monogamous bonded pairs have a better chance of a surviving brood. Perhaps in times of restricted resources or hard to access survivability resources, monogamy is the best answer.
Consider apes and big cats, they have completely different social structures. They conserve energy when the alpha leads the pack for food. The alpha also gets the pick of his ‘harem’, as it were..And they are not monogamous. So there’s that.
I think that while we like to believe that we have access to free choice as human beings, we are not that far removed from our mammalian cousins. Having said that, we are also finding ourselves in a situation where resources are becoming scarce(exponentially increasing population) and mating choices are restricted due to individual’s place on the economic and social hierarchy.
I am compelled to pick serial monogamy over poly or true monogamy. Our biology compels us to obey the brain chemicals. To disregard that is an enormous act of will against nature. Unless we deal with the pesky problem of religion, values and morals along with our resource constrained hierarchical world, hypocritical forced monogamy is here to stay.
In a lot of ways religious morality induced monogamy has paved the way for pair bonding and successful child survivorship statistics....so from the gene POV, monogamy must be winning in some way.
I have read several books that would argue that our biology specifically predisposes us to not be monogamous, especially when it comes to child rearing. Sex at Dawn and Sapiens are two examples. The latter makes a weaker case for it, but it equally rejects that we are biologically monogamous. The author there argues that best we can tell, when we were still evolving to be what we are today, there were tribes that practices essentially polyamory and group parenting, and there were more monogamy-centered ones, leading to the conclusion that we do have a choice in the matter. Bonobos, great apes closer to us than Chimps, are non-monogamous to a fault. I have two children that are a result of a non-monogamous relationship, and yes, it was definitely easier to have the extra hands and extra resources during their first few years.
While anecdata, I will also bring up the example of my 80 year old grandfather. When he was in his 60s, my grandmother suddenly died. A few years later he reconnected with an old friend, and they developed a romantic relationship, and are married and still together. They are some of the most co-dependent people I know. Happy, it seems, but co-dependent. I think co-dependence doesn't just afflict young people.
Multi generational families had multiple hands and shared resources to raise children. It’s the grandmother effect. I was raised in such a family. All my grandmothers children and grandchildren lived under the same roof. The women went to work, were able to pursue education and were financially independent. Everyone participated in child rearing with the grandmother at the helm and contributed to the common pot. It was based on kinship bond and a product of a strong matrilineal lineage. It comes from kinship/communalism and not individualism. But all the world is individual now as most societies around the world become westernized.
I think religious morality and wealth inequality greatly affects the hypothesis in both the books you mentioned.
No doubt, there will be a small percentage of world
population that will play out that hypothesis but majority will not.
The chances that the human species will adopt poly lifestyle is small to nil, imo.
However, I think marriage as well as polyamorous or just about any relationship should come with reevaluations and time limit. It is a human universal to want to have an ownership stake in any relationship. It’s higher during reproductive age(due to the cost of rearing young).
If the concept of marriage(because it does carry a respectable heft of societal approval and reflects religious morality) is abolished AND if women are truly independent..especially financially, then I think it would become more prevalent and acceptable.
In one of my imaginary worlds, communal child rearing will also likely allow people to embrace free love, as it were...I believe that love has the propensity to include many people and at the same time, but only if external pressures that cause relationship insecurities and vulnerabilities are alleviated.
I am trying to remember the book where I read the different kinds of love...courtly love, romantic love etc etc. it was fascinating because ‘love’ through the various centuries was entirely a function of
religion and society and economics. But love is what happens between our eye brows and inside our skulls powdered by brain chemicals. We are resistant to accept it.
I find myself happy to accept love when I recognize it, hold it in the now and then release it. On the flip side, I realize that I have enormous capacity to hate. It surprised me but I don’t deny it either. I dislike as many people as I love. It’s like curses and hexes kind of hate. I guess it is my unintegrated shadow inching towards my self.
I agree with a lot of this. I do think that as we replace extended family structures with free market alternatives (you can replace your grandmother with a hired babysitter, etc.), we will see alternative relationship structures become more common. Also, let’s not forget that religion is slowly losing hold of our collective minds. More people identify today as atheists than a generation ago. And of course while unrelated, marriage equality has shown that messing with the institution of marriage in now way destroys society. And speaking of marriage, in the US at least it is such an expensive proposition, that a long of millennials simply don’t do it (along with not buying cars or houses). Imagine a society where the majority of the people grew up with Tinder and never want to get married. That’s the reality we live in now. In fact, a majority of millennials report having participated in a non-monogamous relationship at some point. I doubt it will become the norm any time soon, but it could certainly become a norm.
If you remember the name of that book, I would love to read it!
I hear you. But first thoughts: 1. Replacing family structures with free market alternatives means that one must be comfortably wealthy to be able to buy into it. 2. Perhaps this would mean that poly lifestyle is only suitable to a certain sector of the population 3. Perhaps this is why religion found its most viral vectors amongst the poor and disadvantaged as it offered a sort of moral support and hope towards ‘something better’ than strained existence (promise of heaven)in return for their faith in whatever organized religion. 4. That most people now identify as atheists makes me believe that we ahve indeed conquered most of the crushing poverty that was prevalent only half a century ago. I would ascribe it to capitalism. It seems to be a better route than communism which started with atheism but didn’t succeed as an economic system. 5. That marriage is not an attractive proposition in the USA is likely because there are more ‘empowered women these days than before. I don’t think it’s a tinder effect. Most women simply don’t want to be married and pop out kids. They are likely subscribing to serial monogamy than polyamory.
As mentioned, the above enumerated points are ‘first thoughts’...i want to ponder further to see if any of them contradict each other.
Re: the book. I can’t remember!! Somehow I feel like it is probably one by Leonard Shlain. I found his book Alphabet and the Goddess enthralling at one point and then binged on everything he wrote.
[..]His books include Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light (1991),[3] The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image (1998),[4] and Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution (2003).[5][..]
I want to say it’s one of his for sure. It was beautifully written and I loved the words as much as the content. So I want to say that I am 90% sure it’s one of Shlain’s books!
A great read about that is “a complete idiot’s guide to chemistry of love”, which gave some solid peer-reviewed confirmations to some of the trends I thought I was spotting.
Quite much agree with the rest, not a lot to add :) - life is most beautiful in its diversity.
Not trying to criticize here, but if "love" becomes freely applicable to all sorts of relationships of varying intimacies and understandings and bonds, doesn't that cheapen the word?
Maybe the word doesn't need to be love -- but I think we need a word that expresses commitment. Perhaps not exclusively, but at least through-thick-and-thin support. Love without this sounds oxymoronic to me.
It depends on how you define it. It may sound like I am preaching “the one twue way”. I am not, I support those who define things differently. Having said that, the way I view it is that love is already used all over the place: “I love this game!” “I love chocolate cake!” “I love you, and your sister, and your little brother! I love my kids!” Why do we “allow” such usage without qualms, but when it comes to romantic love we only allow for it to mean “feelings you have toward one partner that you must then try to be with, and possibly marry and procreate”? Why can’t you enjoy someone’s company so much that you love them for just that moment, that hour, that year?
And what about the whole mutual love dilemma? Have you ever witnessed a situation where two people are together and one is nervous to profess their love to the other because they might not say it back? And if they do, do they feel it the same way?
That I think actually brings me to the most interesting way “love” is cheapened: when it is unexpressed. Say you are dating someone and by all accounts “it’s too early”. But you know you are in love. And maybe this is some puppy love because you are a teenager, but maybe you found the person that makes you feel just right in your late 40s after two divorces. You know what Love feels like for you and this is it, but a month in you cannot just profess it to your partner, can you? Well why not? If you tell them “I love you. I feel it deep in my belly, and in my fingertips when I touch you. This doesn’t mean I need to marry you, or we need to be together forever. It doesn’t even mean that you have to love me, now or ever. But I want you to know that you make me feel this way, and I am lucky that you are here with me right now.” How is that a cheapened version of “real love”?
I agree with what you've said, but your last paragraph also points to a simple, easy way forward (on the individual level): just describe the specific feelings without needing to roll them all up into that one loaded word. The specificity is probably better communication anyways. It also maybe frees the other person to express the same kind of appreciation.
Sure. But why? Because someone else somewhere else might feel uncomfortable with how you feel with my partner? If what you feel can only be described as love, but you don’t plan on making a commitment, why would you call it something else? Wouldn’t it be the person who wants commitment that needs to say “I love you and want to be with you forever” rather that the person who just is experiencing love that has to clarify “I love you but am not necessarily looking for a commitment”? If you accept that loves doesn’t mean commitment, it logically follows that you can experience a form of love unburdened by expectations. After all, I love chocolate but that doesn’t imply that I should only eat chocolate.
It looks like we just disagree on definitions -- my definition of love entails commitment and obligation, yours doesn't.
But there are so many existing ways to communicate your definition of love: you're so rad! hanging out with you makes me feel great! I'm having such a good time! or any of the things you wrote responding to my comment above. Why take love and make it synonymous (ignoring issues of correctness, I think the current popular meaning of love, expressed between two romantically involved persons, is closest to the "serious" one I have in mind)?
I think we should generally be careful using words that may have charged meanings for people -- not for the sake of anonymous third parties not present, but because one of the two parties may be such a person.
Yes, I think that's really the only place where we disagree. And for the record I am OK with that, and just responding as an intellectual exercise, not because I think you are wrong for using that definition.
First off, the argument that I can't say "I love you" without it immediately obligating me to start working towards a long term commitment (LTC), and instead having to say "You are so rad" feels a whole lot like the last argument people used against marriage equality: "but why do you have to call it marriage. I am happy that you found someone but marriage is between a man and a woman, has always been that way, and should remain that way, otherwise we are messing with society's understanding of marriage, and that's dangerous." Not saying that this is what you are saying, it just has the same feel to it. If I love someone, I tell them so. I don't think they are rad. I think I am in love. They are different things.
Second, if we are looking at these terms as constructs, with the ability to define what they are, I would argue that simpler is better. Love is love. Commitment is commitment. Isn't it better to communicate them as separate things, than have the ambiguity of implying them together? Love is a feeling. Commitment is an choice and a set of actions. Why does a feeling imply action? No other feeling really does: "I dislike you" doesn't mean "now we must fight", and "I think you are funny" doesn't imply "we must start telling jokes". So why is love special in this way?
Third, the practical problems of telling someone "I love you" a week into that relationship. Yes, in a vacuum that can be a supremely bad idea. But as someone with some experience with this, I can tell you that practically, it's less of a problem than it would seem. Typically, I will be very upfront about my non-traditional view of relationships and people usually self-select pretty quickly to be the kind that understands them. Also the term casual love specifically is pretty well known in my circles, or I simply explain it as I did here, providing the original post about it. I never had an issue with someone mistaking it for "... and I want to be together forever", nor have I heard of it being mistaken that way. So I would argue it's a non-issue.
And fourth, love is a feeling an individual experiences. If you love someone, ok great good for you. Why should that compel you to do anything about it. Like, you suddenly and inexplicably fall in love with someone who isn't your spouse. Are you now obligated to get a divorce and try to pursue this new person? Just because you developed a feeling? Love shouldn't imply expectation. I guess you could argue that if you are in a committed monogamous relationship you could never fall in love with someone else, but let's face it, being committed to person A has rarely prevented someone from developing feelings for person B. Or is the idea that you can develop feelings, it's just not love, because you are in an LTC? Or you can't call it that? That to me that brings it back to the talking heads on TV saying "well where does it end? Today you feel love for your neighbor, and tomorrow the society crumbles?" Again, I think we are all big boys and girls and know when we feel in love, why not call it what it is?
So in conclusion, in my mind better communication wins. "I love you" vs "I love you and want to form an LTC" are different things, and rolling them into just "I love you" is what puts all the expectations on someone.
Ah, yeah, definitely, in the ideal world. I wasn't thinking about other people, though, but about being clear to the person for whom you're feeling the feelings.
Of course. It’s amazing to me that we often look for already existing solutions to most of our problem in life and work, except when it comes to relationships. Most times others have already experienced what we are struggling with and have found good ways of making it work. This is why I nerd out about this stuff so much: there is a whole world of custom made relationships out there and some have books, studies, opinion pieces, etc.
I have. Her stuff is pretty great, though I found Mating in Captivity a bit lacking on solutions to some of the cases she presented and also lacking a sort of overarching theory. But that’s just because how my brain operates: show a theory, then show examples of it being applied. Overall I found it super helpful to dissect certain types of relationships I’ve had and how to make existing ones a lot healthier.
The idea that you can say “I love you” to a partner 2 weeks into a relationship and not place any expectations on it being actionable is very freeing. I have experienced it myself several times on both ends. It is a wonderful thing. Remember folks, you don’t have to love every partner you have. And if you love them, you don’t have to do anything about it. You can love for a week or a lifetime, you can love for a lifetime and never get serious. You can get serious but not married. The choices are yours and many options exist for all kinds different relationship types.
Edit: if anyone wants to nerd out about non-monogamous/polyamorous relationships, I am happy to talk about it.