From: barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: Re: Peeking through the curtain
Summary: monogamous (or not)
Date: 7 Apr 92 18:44:50 GMT
Organization: QQQCLC

In article <ptpj77h@lynx.unm.edu> blowfish@carina.unm.edu (rON.) writes:
>In article <1992Apr5.160718.10837@midway.uchicago.edu> pooh@group-w.uchicago.edu (Pooh @ the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen) writes:
>>In article <s4mjv9f@lynx.unm.edu> blowfish@carina.unm.edu (rON.) writes:
>>>Calling a non-monogamous relationship 'open' is simply a candy coating for
>>>the fact that you can't trust your partner (or yourself) enough in a
>>>trusting relationship to remain faithful. IM(Never)HO.
>>
>>I strongly disagree, rON.  It takes a LOT of trust to tell your
>>partner, "I trust your judgment and trust you to sleep with anyone
>>you want.  I also trust you to stay with me."
>
>There's still something wrong with this...what's wrong with asking for
>monogamy >as it is<.

	False dichotomy, Ron; there's nothing wrong with either approach.
Go for monogamy if that's what you like, or don't.

>Saying 'Oh, I trust you to do what you want' is
>simply asking them to remain monogamous, but your just 'preparing'
>yourself because you really don't trust your partner, and you want to
>be ready with the 'Oh, I guess I couldn't trust him/her after all' when
>they play with your trust- or the 'I'll give her/him *one more chance*,
>but thats all' beating.

	Wow, you're a better mind reader than Pooh, herself :-). She has
made modest claims of "reading" individuals under certain circumstances,
but YOU can read the motives of the entire population of people who
believe in open relationships!

	If you want to know the motivations, ask.

>there has to be some point in a relationship where some
>sort of commitment to each-other has to be made. I'm not talking about
>marriage vows or anything- but a point where you gotta say 'OK, I've spent
>lots of time/energy/life/whatever on this here person, they are my SO'.
>
>Otherwise, whats the point of >having< an SO?

	I'm glad you asked that question :-). I've got nothing against
monogamy. In my opinion, clear-thinking people, whether monogamous or
otherwise, don't try to rationalize this preference. Like most things
related to love and sex, it's inherently irrational. They say, "I like /
don't like monogamy because it feels right", period. Why ask why?

	But the rationalizing habit is a very human one, and tough to
break. And, unfortunately, when monogamists start rationalizing monogamy,
they get silly. Ron, why on Earth do you equate "commitment" with sexual
exclusivity? Commitment to a relationship is quite easy to describe
without mentioning monogamy: it means intending to remain in the romantic
partnership indefinitely - living together, loving together, working
together, sharing each others' lives, maybe raising a family. It means
working to make the relationship work. It means honesty and fairness to
the other person.

	Ron apparently has another definition, and frankly it sounds like
a cop-out, to me. He makes no mention of effort as the chief obligation in
a "committed" relationship. Near as I can tell, monogamy is _all_
commitment means to him. If he has a steady date he sleeps with, and they
remain monogamous, then they're "SOs".

	I call that mistaking the symbol for the thing symbolized.
Monogamy is (in traditional relationships) symbolic of romantic
commitment, but there's much more to the commitment than monogamy. Ron is
doing a mix 'n match: take one's favorite bits from marriage and
singlehood, and define your own relationship. _Nothing_ wrong with that;
damn good idea, in fact. But Ron wants the blessings of morality bestowed
on his own mix 'n match, and withheld from others'. Ron, you see, believes
that because monogamy has always symbolized marriage, it is therefore the
one essential ingredient for true couplehood. It would probably never occur
to him to ask a married couple who were intentionally childless, "but then
what's the point of being married?", even though children are _the_
traditional reason for marriage. But this logic escapes him when it comes
to monogamy.

	So, I'm curious, Ron - tell us more about your own mix 'n match.
Would you even initiate a sexual relationship with someone you know has
another lover? If so, at what point in the relationship's development does
a commitment to monogamy become required? Or suppose she _isn't_ sleeping
with anyone else, but because the relationship with you has barely begun,
isn't willing to promise she won't start seeing others? Is that OK? When
does it stop being OK? Does "SO" imply more than monogamy, or is that all
it means? What do you do if you suggest to a woman you're seeing that you
become "SOs" (i.e., monogamously committed), and she says she isn't ready,
though she wishes to continue dating you? Is there some special point
where you give up on her, or where your view of the situation changes from
believing you just don't see eye to eye, to one where you feel she's
abusing the relationship?

	And the final, key question: when others answer the above
questions differently than you do, how do you draw your apparently
arbitrary line between personal preference and their being immoral or
naive or stupid?

-  nothing fails like success  -          Kenn Barry
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Newsgroups: soc.singles