Valentine's Day Pre-Special: A bunch of rambling.

[kiya]

Lotta people in various places have been talking about relationshipness in various ways. And I've had a bit of thinking at that I've been doing as a result.

This one mostly from poly-boston-chat:

• A sort of broadly defined caring about more or less on the basis of a trait -- for values of "exists" or "is alive" or "is human" on that trait, I'd probably use "agape"; I think there's a meaningful distinction to be had between the sort of caring one might have for humans in the broad sense and the sort of caring one might have for things that exist in the broad sense, but I'm not going to get wound up about the lack of a language-distinction there. On the other hand, I do want a separate word for a broadly-defined caring about some subset of people because of their adjectives.
  
• A caring about the specific well-being of a particular entity, as themselves. This is something in my head to do with acquaintanceship here, or the well-being of people of neighbouring tribes.
  
• A personal caring about the specific well-being of a particular entity, as themselves. I think this is sort of my generic usage of the word "love".
  
• A positive inclination towards improving the well-being of a particular entity, within reasonable expectation. The sort of thing that means that I know that if I ever assemble sufficient impulse towards sending roimata a parcel, I will include Dr. Pepper and a square of carpet. Possibly "friendship" in my usage, but I'm not sure.
  
• A positive impulse to induce joyfulness in a particular entity through appropriate displays of caring, and a willingness to be put out of one's way to do so. The tendency when, if confronted with something that might induce such joyfulness, to need to have a reason not to do it rather than a reason to do it. In my usage, "romantic love".
  
• The sort of spark of feeling that indicates that a particular person is some sort of good choice for a more in-depth relationship of some sort. This is related to infatuation, but doesn't seem to be the same thing.
  
• The sort of vibratingly cheerful gleefulness that registers the existence of another person and finds it good. I'm not sure there's a word for this, but I believe that oneironaut and I called it "being cute". (Frequently, for me, a result of a successful demonstration of romantic love.)
  
• Recognition of another person as having physical or intangible attributes that render them pleasing to the mind. I call this "aesthetic appreciation".
  
• Recognition of another person as having attributes that can be understood as being potentially sexually attractive. (This is one I don't have terminology for.)
  
• Identification of another person as being personally attractive in a sexual manner. ("Sexual attraction".)
  
• Impulse to follow through on sexual attraction. ("Sexual desire.")
  
• Powerful emotional engagement with the existence of some other person, especially one found physically and/or romantically attractive. ("Infatuation", I suspect.) Then there's the subcase where that emotional engagement is such that it dents or represses some level of capability for rational processing, which I call NRE or the pink fluffy stupids. Though teinedreugan's told me he doesn't get stupided by it, so I can't use that universally. ;)
  
• The urge to involve a particular person in long-term family-building activities. ("Nesting".)
  
• Recognition of a person not personally known to the recognizer as attractive in some fashion, with some personal interest in that person's career or activities. I'd call this a "star crush". Stereotypically combined with infatuation, but not necessarily.
  
• Desire to be recognised as attractive in general.
  
• Desire to be recognised as attractive in specific.
  
• Desire to pursue and share day-to-day existence with a specific person. (Which I am tempted to refer to as "slogging", just for the amusement value, but I don't actually have a word for.)
  

Probably also stuff I've forgotten.

Addendum: Such as:

• Willingness to share touch.
  
• Wishfulness to share touch.
  
• Desire to share touch.
  
• Skin-craving.
  
• Lust.
  

---

This one mostly from a post on polyamory that I couldn't figure out how to reply to:
This one comes up every so often, and I guess I'm easily perplexed, because I haven't really gotten to a point at which I can wind my mind around it usefully. The question is, essentially, how much involvement do one's partners/others have with each other, how much say, how much does one tell them. (I'm summing up incoherently.)

I think my answer is Mu.

I talk about what's going on in my life. I talk about it in manners related to the people I'm involved with, whether or not they're romantically entangled with me. The people closest to me are probably going to have the most information, but that's skewed oddly; I suspect oneironaut knows more detailed stuff about my ongoing relationship angst with brooksmoses than teinedreugan does, in part because gtst and my relationship is largely founded on the tremendous base of venting volcanically about stuff that is bothering us.

The stuff that's on my mind, the people in my immediate vicinity probably know about -- either they overhear me wandering up and down the hall muttering about it, or I talk about it, or I post it here, or what have you. Stuff that's private to a particular interaction I don't tend to wander up and down the halls talking about.

I guess I don't understand what the "How much do you share?" question is about. From the point of view I can see that question making sense from, I either have incredibly compartmentalised relationships or completely uncompmartmentalised ones, which, I think, goes to show that I don't get to that point of view and try to make sense from there all that often.

I don't keep the people I'm involved with separate at all. They are separate; they're different people. People are immiscible for me. And what I talk about is what I talk about. I make sure to give people the information that they're likely to need to know (or even unlikely but conceivably might need to know, for that matter), and whatever other information I feel is shareable and feel like talking about.

So what do I share? How do I make those decisions?

I honestly have no idea.

---

This one mostly from a Straight Dope Message Board thread about romantic love:
The thread on the SDMB had someone asking if romantic love was important to a lasting relationship. I (and one or two other people) asked him, "Well, uh, what do you mean by 'romantic love'?" (I think the best answer anyone gave was something like, "Romantic love isn't necessary for a lasting relationship; it is, however, necessary for a lasting romantic relationship.) To which he gave the answer of . . . what I'd call near-immediate sexually-charged infatuation, getting swept away by emotion (and, I don't know if this is germaine to his point, within something like five minutes of meeting someone).

Muh.

It doesn't surprise me terribly much that there are people who think of romance that way; it's sort of the fairy tale staple. A lot of the other examples included a related-looking abstracted ideal concept of love, something that comes and goes in a relationship, which seems similar to the NRE/ORE thing that comes up sometimes.

I think part of my issue with Valentine's Day as a holiday thing is that its common manifestation . . . identifies specific things as components of romance, while I perceive romance as being intrinsically almost a private thing, something that has to be personalised. This is related to my irritation at diamond commercials, I suspect, the ones that identify diamonds as the sole legitimate sigils of relationship commitment.

I don't like diamonds all that much. I like coloured stones. (My official engagement ring from teinedreugan centered on a sapphire, because he knows this.) I don't like cut flowers particularly -- but we got a jasmine plant for me, which is much, much better. I don't get feeling-cherished vibes from a majority of the things that are labelled "romantic", and if romantic love isn't "about" expressing that the other person is cherished, I'm really, really confused.

I have other issues with the idea of storing up one's expressions of cherishment (I don't know if that's a word and I don't care! Hah!) for a specific time, but that's a separate rant/ramble, and It's Been Done.


Amended with more concepts for the word-list 12/2/2003 at 3:20 PM Eastern (-5 GMT I think).

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Oh, and my primary reaction to diamond is "an engineering material we haven't figured out how to mass-produce yet".