From: dave@bradley.bradley.edu (David Vessell)
Subject: Re: Sanctity of relationships
Organization: Bradley University
Distribution: world,soc
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 04:00:21 GMT


The net ate my initial response.  I will try to capture the essence of the
discussion....

jsp@uts.amdahl.com (James Preston) writes:

>dave@bradley.bradley.edu (David Vessell) writes:
>
>}Under most circumstances, I see no problem whatsoever with it.  If their
>}relationship is strong, then your efforts won't amount to a hill of beans
>}anyway.  If your actions do break up the relationship, then it probably
>}wasn't very strong to begin with.  
>
>I'm sorry, but I just cannot believe that anyone really and truly feels
>this way.  To me, this is like walking down the street, seeing a car with
>the keys in it, and jumping in and driving it away.  You can rationalize
>all you want that if the owner didn't want his car stolen, he shouldn't
>have left the keys in it, but you still committed theft.  (And before I
>get jumped on, I am not equating relationships with property ownership,
>it's just the first analogy that popped to mind, ok?)

Well, you're right in that your disclaimer addresses what would be my
primary objection to your analogy.  The car is owned by a person.  Taking
the car would be stealing from that person.  If someone else stole the car,
I wouldn't feel all that much pity for him because of his carelessness, but
I would not rejoice over the theft either.  On the other hand, there is a
living breathing free will on the other end of a relationship who must be
taken into consideration here too.  The car does not choose its owner,
whereas two people enter a relatioship mutually.


>Or maybe a better analogy is that of banging on a window with a hammer.
>You can say that if the glass is strong, then your efforts won't amount
>to a hill of beans anyway, and if your actions break the glass then it
>probably wasn't very strong to begin with.  But you can't get away from
>the fact that if you had left the window alone, it would still be fine.

A better analogy, yes.  But I don't draw the same correlation from it.
There are many kinds of glass, varying in type and strength.  Suppose a
person had a relationship that was like window glass.  Under ideal
conditions, I suppose it could certainly last a long time.  But life is not
ideal, and a hammer isn't the strongest thing that could hit it, but a
hammer would certainly be enough.  However, glass of that type doesn't give
much protection, support, or security.

On the other hand, picture if you will a wall made of glass bricks, you
know, the ones that are practically cubes and are sometimes marbled on the
inside.  Build a relationship out of those, and a hammer would be doing
good just to chip it.  You'd need an awfully big hammer to do much damage.
That kind of glass will stand the test of time, and possibly outlive its
builders (how's that for a romantic thought =-).

The point is that life is full of real challenges to two people trying to
make it, and those challenges are orders of magnitude greater than an
outsider's overtures.  A relationship that can't stand up to that isn't
going to last long anyway.


>The point is that such is just rationalization.  Whatever the state of
>an existing relationship, whether it be strong or weak, your efforts to
>actively break it up introduce a new element.  And who are you to say
>what would have happened if you'd stayed out?  Many relationships have
>weathered shakey times and ended up stronger for it.  Your interference
>could be the straw that breaks a camel's back that might very well have
>otherwise recovered.

I suppose it's something of a rationalization, but we rationalize about
lots of things in one amount or another.  Before you write me off as a
heartless scumbag, read my subsequent posting to this thread.  There is a
point where the pursuit stops being ethical, and I have my stopping point
as does everyone else.  Will I do anything and everything to break up a
relationship?  Of course not.  Eventually it becomes counterproductive and
you end up making an enemy of the person you were interested in.

However, I will not go through my life walking on eggshells and being
paranoid about breaking people up.  If I'm interested in someone, I will
make my feelings known and their current relationship state is irrelevant
at that point.  If I really feel it's worth the risk, I may push things a
tad farther but there gets to be a point where you decide the risk isn't
worth it and backing off is the right thing to do.  And I'm prepared to
accept someone doing the same to me.  The problem arises in that everyone
draws the line at a different place.  The unfairness is when the outsider
pursues things past where *I* think is fair, while still being short of
what he thinks is fair.  However, as Dr. Pulaski would no doubt remind us
at this point, life is rarely fair.  To pretend otherwise is to set
yourself up to get hurt.

I used to be an idealist, but I got tired of scrubbing shoeprints off my
forehead so I modified my outlook to be more realistic.  Maybe it's not
good to always think of one's self first, but it makes no sense to put
one's self last by default.  A little assertiveness is healthy.  Too much
and you become an asshole.  Too little and you become a Nice Guy.

-- 
=========*davE*.....making the world safe for intelligent dance music.=========
As you're cleaning the orange carpet, you will hear a voice that says, "Fetch 
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--(David Vessell)--(Bradley University Computing Services)-(dave@bradley.edu)--