I really don't know why I do this to myself.

[kiya]

(By "this" I mean "argue with Tal".)

Though at least this time I did not respond to his "Don't you agree that my conclusion drawn from my personal biases is the case?" with anything other than "No."


. . . provoked in part by being frustrated by Yet Another Round of "Possessiveness bad! Jealousy bad!" but also by the thing that got posted in kith_and_kin recently by wcg.

I'm grateful to songbird for his suggestion that "controlling" be used as a word-substitution for "possessive". Though the more I think about it, I'm not entirely sure that I can see being "controlling" as a bad thing. More on that later, as I work my way around to it.

The thing about the whole possessiveness-bad meme is that it confuses me; it's just . . . nonsensical to me. And the things that a lot of people call "possessiveness" don't parse to me either.

"Mine" means, in my head, "has a territory significantly coextensive with my own" and also requires some stuff actually being in that shared territory, which is mostly subverbal except for the parts that are private. Which means that if I don't apply translation-filters, "possession bad" translates to "commitment bad, expectations bad, depth bad, agreements bad, intimacy bad."

Back when brooksmoses and I were developing our relationship, there was a thread on (hm -- I wonder if this will work) rasfc, where we met; I forget what the thread was about entirely, though I suspect it was the one where I was completely gobsmacked at one point and commented to oneironaut, "Brooks just wrote me a love letter on usenet." In any case, there was a discussion about how having a hypothetical writing partner could be useful in facilitating work and making the work better, and Graydon asked (I think me) something about this, and . . . well, we only realized after the fact that the Platonically Correct Response would have been for him to reply, "Mine." (As opposed to the grammatically tangled response that actually got made.)

I pointed out to Brooks that that was probably the best response, when I realized it myself, and I think he was about as stunned by the intimacy of it as I had been by the love letter.

The thing I see other people pointing to when they say "possessiveness bad" doesn't have much to do with coextensivity of territory in what I see. I mean, I can stretch it if I presume that the territory is not merely significantly coextensive, but entirely subsumed, and the swallowed territory in some way digested such that it no longer exists, and no other territories overlap it in any way. If I add all that other crap on, I can call it "possessiveness", but I'd rather find another word for the other crap so I can point to that and not conflate it with the other stuff.

(I suspect, incidentally, that my perspective on possessiveness is probably a reflection of reading a lot of Le Guin while young and impressionable, and studying inflected languages when young enough to start dealing with the notion of possessives as if they were genitives.)

So I got asked if the controlling-possessiveness-thing-whatever thing looks to me to be more common among monogamous folk than polyfolk.

I said no.

I don't, really; I think the manifestations may differ in some ways (though not necessarily), and I don't think that monogamy in any way requires that sort of attitude. I don't think that someone with a particular relationship preference is necessarily going to be more or less likely to do the conflation-lump thing I mentioned above.

And I don't know where to draw the line between "bad controlling" and other life-management shit. Not from the outside.

For all the, "We're interested in finding a third who can be connected to both of us because that's the sort of synergy that appeals to us" there are "Sure, we're poly, you can have an additional partner so long as it's someone who'll fuck me too, never mind that we're both more or less straight so that's a serious unlikelihood"s. For all the people who have chosen to limit primary-relationship status to a single dyad for reasons of negotiation, consent, and comfort, there are people who want to slam down on expressions of intimacy that their partner can make to others. And so on.

There was someone on another list who was in a 24/7 d/s relationship, who was required by the dom to be monogamous while the dom had other relationships. That person was, I think, jealous as hell and incredibly turned on by the whole energy dynamic. Good controlling? Bad controlling? Damfino. When the person first turned up on the mailing list there was a whole, "Well, is this really poly" argument. I handflap in helpless confoundedness.

So where does the line go between this controlling thing and where it goes bad? I posit a set of N people with a sexual fidelity agreement, arranged because one or more of them has insecurity issues, disease concerns, or what have you for which that is a reasonable concern. Is that over the line? Is it over the line if it's presumed rather than explicitly negotiated? Is it over the line if the number N varies?

I think I can only speak to what's too controlling for me, what sorts of relationships presume to claim territory that I'm not willing to grant them. And I see relationships of all shapes that give me the howling heebie-jeebies on that account, and no correlation between whether they're monogamous or polyamorous structures and whether or not I get the screaming run-aways.


But enough Martian anthropology.

I've been dealing with depression again. And I'm actually dealing at the moment; my personal goal is to do one significant and useful thing per day, and also to remember to eat each day. Two days ago, I got about two thirds of the way through cleaning the cruft off the living room rug so I could vacuum it. Yesterday, I cleaned out Kunda's favorite lurking log, which had accumulated lots of skin and such and thus needed to be blasted clean with the hose. Today I have done laundry (not sure how many useful things that counts as; it was put in the wash, and transferred to the dryer, and I may remember to take it out and bring it upstairs when it's done). I have unloaded and loaded the dishwasher, though I haven't started it, because I have not the brains to either work out how to get the hose attached to the faucet or figure out why the door won't close.

This is useful inasmuch as it keeps me from feeling like a complete waste of oxygen.

I also finally beat the scenario in Kohan that was aggravating me. And the next one, for good measure. But those don't count as useful, even if they were personal goals.

Comments

[aiglet.livejournal.com]

I'm planning on taking my husband's last name if/when I get married only so that I can stop having this feeling that I'm dishonoring one side or the other of my horribly distended family. (Since I was raised as an Arden, went to HS and college as a Secor, and am now related to people named Arden, Peman, Dupier, Frey and Secor -- and my mother's maiden name was Smith, so it's not even like I can just revert!)