joreth: (anger)
2022-07-10 03:10 pm

Friendship Is Not The Consolation Prize Nor The Stepping Stone To A Relationship

Reminder:   Friendship is not the consolation prize, nor is it the stepping stone - the landing pad where you wait in the queue for your turn at a romantic relationship.

Friendship is the goal.

If you approach your relationships from the perspective that you will enjoy it in whatever form it takes *including platonic friendship* and that is your end-goal, then maybe, sometimes, occasionally, it might turn into a romantic relationship as a *consequence* of being a decent fucking person that they enjoy being around.

However, if you approach your relationships authentically instead of as tools to get you the one kind of relationship you think you want, then it won't even matter if it doesn't turn into a romantic relationship because you will have achieved the "right" relationship anyway.  So don't try to be friends with someone if you are interested in them romantically and think being friends is the way for them to learn enough about you that they'll eventually return your feelings. If you aren't interested in the friendship for the friendship's sake, just don't be friends.

Because, I'll tell you a little secret here, you aren't their friend if you do this.  If they never develop romantic feelings for you in spite of all your effort being their "friend", they're not the one stringing you along.  You're the one pulling the bait-and-switch by dangling a friendship in front of them under false pretenses.

If you're thinking "how can I get someone to like me / love me / have sex with me?" and you come up with any sort of answer that includes any variation of "be their friend", you're wrong.  Being their "friend" is not how you "get" someone to like you.  Being their friend is how you BE THEIR FRIEND.  What you "get" out of it is the pleasure of BEING a decent person who someone wants to be friends with.

Don't be friends with someone unless you honestly want their friendship and are fine with that being it, because you're *not* friends with them otherwise anyway.
joreth: (being wise)
2022-07-09 08:12 pm

We Need An Online "I Am / You Are Flooded, Shut Up" Option

*Sigh*  Normally I have no problem blocking people who are becoming a pain in the ass, but when it's a *friend* who says *several times* that he will back out of an argument and then refuses to do so, sometimes I have to hang up the phone for him.  But I'd rather not, and it hurts to do it.

I already know that when I lose my temper, I'll say things that I will later regret.  So when I back out of an argument, I back out.  I know that I can't be trusted to have a productive conversation when I'm too emotionally invested in my position to really hear the other side.   If you have the foresight to know that about yourself too, then seriously, back out when you say you're going to.  Because I guarantee, no matter what the person on the other side of the argument is like, you will only make things worse if you stay in an argument past the point that even you recognize that you need to take a break from it.

The other person could be the best, most calm and collected arguer ever, or they could be a total douchebag, and either way, if you're not in the right emotional space for the argument, anything you say is going to make things worse.  Which is why I back out when I'm getting pissed off.  Unfortunately, though, online spaces don't offer very good ways to "back out" and they rely on the other person's cooperation or nuking them.

I wish FB had an option to just, say, put someone in a time-out.  I mean, I know that you can unblock people later, but it's so ... final, so harsh.  Maybe I just want to stop someone from talking at me for a while.  It's like, if you're in an argument with someone in person, you can leave the room.  But if you're in an argument with someone at a *party*, then you have to either leave the party to prevent them from following you around the party to continue arguing or kick them out of the party.

Sometimes, neither is an acceptable option for the circumstances.  Sometimes, I just want someone to stop talking at me while I go into the "quiet room" at the party, or go talk with someone else on the other side of the room.  I can turn off FB for a while and let them rant and rave at an empty inbox, but then I can't wander around FB.  That's me leaving the party.  Besides, then they're still ranting and raving and those messages will be there when I get back.  Leaving might prevent *me* from saying something I don't want to say, but it doesn't make someone else take the space they need but won't take.  And obviously I can't kick *them* off FB (nor would I want to).

Unfriending & unfollowing aren't always the right options either.  When the problem is that someone I know posts shit that I don't want to see, then those are two reasonable options.  But when the problem is that someone keeps talking at me, unfriending and unfollowing don't prevent that.  I don't necessarily want to stop seeing *them*, nor do I necessarily want them to stop seeing *me*.  I want them to lose the ability to contact me for the moment, either DM or comments or tagging me.

And, maybe I don't *want* to actually unfriend someone.   I grew up understanding that friends and family argue sometimes, and it's not the end of the relationship.  Sometimes those arguments are some pretty ugly fights, even, and it still doesn't mean that the relationship *has* to end over it.

I've been reading some stuff (citations not at hand atm, but check out The Gottman Institute for more on that) that suggests that there is a point in an argument at which nothing productive is happening because the participants are "flooded", meaning too emotional, and taking a break at that point significantly increases the chances of a resolution post-break.  My family did this intuitively.  I think it's one of the reasons why I maintain such strong emotional ties to members of my family who have such different worldviews from me.

Sometimes I just don't want to be in *this* argument right *now* and the other person doesn't seem to have the self-control to stop arguing.  But, for whatever reason, I don't want to nuke the relationship.  It would be nice to have, like, a 24-hour Wall of Silence, where neither of us can message each other or comment on each other's posts, until we've both had some space and time to calm down.   But, y'know, you're still friends, and maybe you can even still see each other's posts and still interact in groups or mutual friends' comment threads.  You just can't PM them or talk *in their space*.

But as long as people can't seem to help themselves and continue talking at others past the point where even they recognize that they are not in the right frame of mind to be continuing the conversation, I have to resort to blocking.

And I don't like that.   There's not enough nuance in our online responses, and I think that hurts us individually and as communities.
joreth: (dance)
2022-02-17 04:04 pm

Yes You Really Can Do Exercises To Improve Your Non-Verbal Communicaiton Skills

A few years ago I wrote about a dance situation where I was sliding into a depressive state but putting on my best pretend-happy face (https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/387838.html).   I went out dancing and met up with 2 friends that night - one dancer and one non-dancer.

The non-dancer and I had been having some incredibly intimate conversations recently and we were getting to know each other *really* well.  He saw the effect that the endorphins had on me and thought I looked happy.  I was smiling, outgoing, and having one of my best dance-skill nights where I was totally killing it on the floor.   The non-dancer saw all of that and remarked on how happy I looked.

The dancer friend and I had not had that same level of intimacy and we only knew each other marginally well.  But after one 3 minute song of full-body contact, he could see the depression behind the smile and the dance endorphins.

So now I want to give another example of how partner dancing gives people amazingly good non-verbal communication skills.

In 2019, I started a casual relationship with another dancer.   We were becoming pretty good friends, but we still had some barriers up in the emotional intimacy department.   We were having fun, but that's about it.  But he's a fantastic lead and can build very good partnerships with his follows on the floor.   I'll call him Michael.

We had not told anyone in our dance communities that we had been sleeping together.   First of all, we weren't *dating*, so it felt weird to be making announcements about a casual relationship, but second, we are both community leaders and we didn't want to make things weird with overlapping our private and public lives.

Plus, he's ultimately monogamous and available for a dating relationship, so eventually he would want to find a romantic partner (probably from within the dance community) and having everyone already know that he's hooking up with someone else tends to make potential monogamous dating partners keep their distance.   He would, of course, disclose to anyone to whom that information is relevant, but it didn't need to be public knowledge.  Ah, the complex, twisty rules of mono culture.

I have another friend, who I'll call Anne, who is also a dancer.   She and I have a similar level of platonic emotional intimacy - decent friends but still getting to know each other.   Anne and Michael have their own friendship with each other, and it's possibly a closer emotional relationship than I had with either of them.

So, on this particular Wednesday night, I went to my usual dance event, and I met a guy there who was interested in using the venue.   The manager wasn't there that night, so he wandered over to my event to make connections.  So we chatted and I let him in on how our event was arranged and stuff.  I'll call him Nick.  I was feeling some chemistry between us, but I wasn't sure how much of that was real and how much was just because I had really good sex earlier in the day and I was still all after-glowey.

I found out that, in addition to Nick being a promoter, he's also a Latin dancer.  So I invited him up to my DJ booth to pick whatever song he wanted and to dance with me.  So we did and he's a fucking amazing dancer - one of the best I've ever danced with.

Earlier, he had given me his business card, offering to help me with promotion of our event.   It felt like a pretty typical networking type of exchange.  Later, while bent over my laptop looking at music (he also gave me a ton of his own music, so we were talking and exchanging files), he suggested I call him to get together and do more music exchange when we had time and more drive space, and he gave me his personal number.

Now, this could have gone either way.  It could have been more networking, or it could have been a soft flirt to see if there was interest.  I enthusiastically accepted his number, y'know, to exchange music.  Then we danced.  He said several times that he was impressed, given that I'm not a Latin dancer, I'm a Ballroom Latin dancer (which is different) and a beginner at that.

So I put on a bachata, which I like better than salsa, and we danced again.   Then he mentioned another style of dance that I might like and when I asked him what it was like, we danced again.  I was definitely feeling the chemistry.  After the 3rd dance, the conversation lulled, and I excused myself to mingle with my other guests and friends.   Here's the relevant part...

As I was walking across the rather large dance floor, apparently I was smiling.   Anne and Michael were standing next to each other, both watching me (everyone had stopped what they were doing to watch me dance with Nick just a moment before).   Michael remarked to Anne that I looked happy.

Anne, knowing that I often get trapped by men in uncomfortable conversations because a) I'm a woman at a nightclub and b) I'm the event host who has to make the rounds and talk to everyone, suggested the possibility that it might have been a tense smile.   Keep in mind that I'm still a good 50-60 feet away and it's dark with flashing, disorienting lights.

Michael, without taking his eyes off me, said "no, that's a happy look".   Apparently Anne glanced sharply at Michael as she realized that he was able to tell the difference between my happy smile and my pasted, polite but tense smile.   She looked at him, looked back at me, back at him, back at me, and on the third glance back at him (all of which I could see as I walked towards them), she asked him if we were sleeping together.

Surprised, he looked at her, admitted it, and then asked how she knew.  She said that the first clue was his knowing the difference between my smiles, and what confirmed it was the expression on his face as he watched me walk over to them and his relaxed posture, as well as my own body language while I walked towards them.

All of this happened in the span of time it took me to walk across the dance floor.  When I arrived, I told them all about who the guy was and mentioned that I got his number.   Michael said "see? Happy smile!"

So, here is someone I have been dancing with for months able to tell at a glance from across a *dark* room the difference between genuinely being excited about something and being polite to a new person and my general enthusiasm for the activity.   Because he is getting to know me very intimately through dancing.  The sex helps, but that's relatively new compared to how long we've been dancing together, and also sex is very contextual.   Dancing expresses a lot of different emotions, and we can feel that with the music and the body contact.  And here is someone else who I have *not* been dancing with but who has general non-verbal communication skills, and who *has* been dancing with the other person in this scenario so she knows *his* body language almost as intimately as I do.

He can read me, she can read him, and through our mutual connection with him and our general skills, she can infer my mental state too.  Kind of like the dance version of metamours. 

I know that a lot of people don't like dancing or think they're bad at it.  But I can't stress enough just how valuable those skills can be in interpersonal relationships. I've known some people who are just naturally that intuitive, but I don't know of any other activity that people can practice that develops this level of intuitiveness and awareness of other people.  This is an activity that can *teach* and *improve* exactly this kind of non-verbal communication and intuitiveness regardless of one's starting point in intuiting non-verbal communication.

I would like to encourage more people to try partner dancing, or at least to learn lead / follow exercises, to add one more *incredibly* powerful tool to their relationship toolkit.
joreth: (anger)
2022-02-15 12:46 pm

Help, My Friend Did Not Out Herself To Me!

 
www.quora.com/Should-I-be-offended-that-my-friend-of-about-8-months-didn-t-tell-me-that-she-s-a-lesbian-Do-I-bring-it-up-or-wait-for-her-to-tell-me/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Should I be offended that my friend (of about 8 months) didn’t tell me that she’s a lesbian? Do I bring it up, or wait for her to tell me?

A.
She didn’t tell you because:

A) It’s none of your business
B) Straight people don’t announce their straightness to their friends, so why should gay people?
C) She might have thought it was obvious that she didn’t need to make an announcement.
D) She didn’t know you well enough yet to know if you were safe enough to come out to.

In any case, who she chooses to love or who she is attracted to has nothing to do with you and is all about her, so you getting offended at how she handles her sexuality is pretty selfish and self-centered of you.

Let it go. Stop making her sexuality all about you. If you’re not going to be up in their genitals, what they choose to do with them isn’t your business. Even your friends don’t have to tell you anything about themselves that they don’t want to.
joreth: (anger)
2022-02-15 10:32 am

Stop Asking Me About Having Children

www.quora.com/What-is-a-tactful-way-to-respond-to-my-step-mother-in-law-when-she-pesters-my-husband-and-I-about-having-kids-when-we-told-her-we-do-not-want-any-children/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is a tactful way to respond to my step mother-in-law when she pesters my husband and I about having kids when we told her we do not want any children?

A
. The original question asked for "tactful" responses. Trust me, for me, this IS "tactful".
  • "I'm concerned about why you’re asking me this. Are you getting everything you need at home?"

  • "I actually like being happy."

  • "Sweetie, I couldn't keep my goldfish alive as a kid, what makes you think I should be in charge of a child?"

  • "I'd rather spend my money on beer" - you could go with a totally frivolous item meant to show you as totally unsuitable like "beer" or "drugs", or you could go for high-ticket items that show how expensive children are like "a new house" or "a dream vacation"

  • "The world is overpopulated already."

  • "I just found out I'm infertile, but thanks for bringing up such a painful and private subject."

  • "The cat would get jealous."

  • "I love my husband as a person, but frankly, I'm not passing on my genes unless they merge with Jason Momoa [insert celebrity hottie here]."

  • "I need to be the only one in the house who has temper tantrums and cries for no reason."

  • "After the last 'incident', the courts warned me to stay away from children if I value my freedom."

  • "I'm an atheist / feminist, I don't birth children, I eat them." (full disclosure - I’m both, this is a joke) (this also works for "pagan")

  • "I don't know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings." ~ Marissa Tomei

  • "Childhood was heartbreaking enough." ~ Chelsea Handler

  • "We thought we might try renting one first, to make sure we don't kill it before having our own."
When are you going to have children? -
  • "I'll let you know when I change my mind. In the meantime, I'm sure there are more important things in your own life that you could be thinking about."

  • "When you learn to mind your own business."

  • "Why? Are you finally sick of talking about yours?"

  • "What answer could I give you so that you'll stop asking?"

  • "I'm sorry, what did you say? Oh, I thought you said something else that's completely none of your business."

  • "Only God knows, and He hasn't told me yet."

  • "As soon as I figure out how. Got any suggestions?"

  • "I already have one - your step-son."

  • "Tomorrow."

  • "Can I get back to you? How soon do you need to know?"

  • "Did you know that 1 in 6 couples, who desperately want to have a child, struggle with infertility? I'm not going to tell you if I'm one of those people, but maybe you'll think about how hurtful your question might be to someone who is."

  • "You know, that's a really personal question you shouldn't ask everyone. Some people have a hard time getting pregnant, and questions like that could really make them feel bad about their situation."

  • "We're waiting to see how yours turn out before we decide."

  • "As soon as their value goes up to an acceptable level on the black market."

  • "Oh, soon I hope! I found this great recipe for roasted babies that I've been dying to try out!"

  • "I'm waiting to meet Mr. Right." (especially funny since you're talking to your husband's parents)

  • "When I can be sure of doing a better job of teaching manners than your parents."
joreth: (polyamory)
2021-09-04 08:10 pm

What If You And Your Best Friend Like The Same Person?

www.quora.com/What-should-I-do-if-my-best-friend-and-I-like-the-same-guy/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What would you do when you and your best friend like the same person?

A.
The same thing that I do when anyone and I like the same person - find out what the other person wants.  Their input is kinda important here, and really the deciding factor.  If the other person likes us both, then we both date him.  If he only likes one of us, then he dates one of us.  If he isn’t interested in either of us, then neither of us date him.

His consent makes any potential conflict pretty much irrelevant.  It doesn’t matter how much I like someone, they have to want to be with me in order for me to be with them.  If they don’t want to be with me, then no amount of my feelings for them will change that fact (short of overriding their agency).  His relationships with other people are not my business to control or dictate.  He can have relationships with whomever he wants and manage them however he wants.

If what he wants or how he does the things that he does conflicts with my value system, resulting in a loss of respect for him, then I can choose to remove myself from the situation.  If what he wants or how he does the things that he does infringes or imposes (negatively) in any way on the well-being of my body, mind, emotions, finances, or anything else that belongs to me, I can choose to remove myself from the situation.

But him just liking someone else?  Him dating someone else?  Him being romantic or sexual with someone else?  None of that has anything to do with me, so if I and my best friend happen to like the same guy, well, there’s nothing TO be done about that.  I do what I do with the people who consent to doing those things with me, my friends do what they do with the people who consent to doing those things with them.

It’s like asking me “what do you do when you and your friend both like the same restaurant?”  Uh, we both eat there whenever we feel like eating there (sometimes together, most of the time apart) as long as the restaurant is open and catering to our business.  Whether my friend likes that restaurant or not has nothing to do with what I do about liking the restaurant, except if my friend doesn’t like it, I probably won’t invite them to eat there with me.

I actually find that a lot of my friends’ exes or current partners make good dating partners for me too.  Not always, but often.  As I like to say, polyamorous people come with references!  If my friend likes someone, then at the very least, he’s probably a pretty decent human being, and then I get the bonus of having metamours that I already know I like and get along with.

Of course, we don’t always have the same taste in partners.  I’m straight, for instance, and most of my friends are bi or pan.  And just because someone is a decent human being, it doesn’t necessarily translate to romantic or sexual interest.  A lot of my friends’ other partners are great people to be around, but I’m not interested in dating them.  That’s OK too.

The point is, who my friends are interested in is irrelevant to how I handle being interested in someone myself.  The person I’m interested in has the deciding vote in what happens there - without his consent, it’s a non-starter.  With his consent, we can negotiate the kind of relationship we want to have with each other, and whether anyone else is interested in him has fuck-all to do with what he and I negotiate between ourselves.  That’s between them.
joreth: (feminism)
2021-09-04 05:54 pm
Entry tags:

Has Your Attire Ever Offended Someone?

www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-offended-somebody-with-what-you-were-wearing-What-was-it-that-you-wore/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

I'm sure I've offended people on more than one occasion with what I was wearing, but this was the one that came to mind:

Q.   Have you ever offended somebody with only something you were wearing? What was it that did it?

A.  
I have a shirt that has a quote by some atheist that says (and I’m paraphrasing) something like “I contend that we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you”.  I wore it one day while spending the weekend with a boyfriend (who is also an atheist).

His friend was having a party that he had planned to go, and I totally forgot about.  So when we went to the party, I didn’t even notice what I was wearing, which was the only shirt I had packed for that day.  Apparently, the host and his wife are Christians and the shirt offended the wife so much that she emailed the boyfriend after the party and told him that I wasn’t allowed back at her house because of the shirt.

Fortunately, that boyfriend responded by saying 1) if I wasn’t welcome, he didn’t feel welcome either since he shared my views, and 2) if she had no problem with her pagan friends wearing their non-christian religious symbols and openly talking about their non-Christian pagan beliefs, then she was a hypocrite to single out the atheist for expressing our lack of belief as well.

So I never went back to that house again, and the wife was so offended that the boyfriend was offended on my behalf at her offense at my shirt, that it was the final straw in a series of offenses that severed their friendship entirely.

Considering they also disapproved of our being poly (even though she was a webcam girl) and the husband had actually been grooming that boyfriend and their entire circle of friends since high school (he was more than 10 years older and had sought out high schoolers to start a weird “sovereign citizen movement” cult that they thought was pretend like the SCA but he was serious about), I’m totally not sorry about being the final trigger to end that friendship.
joreth: (sex)
2020-05-09 11:55 pm
Entry tags:

I Meet People In Strange Places

Them:  So, how did you two meet?

Me & Friend: ...

Me:  [blank look]

Friend:  [blank look]

Me:  I'm not sure, it was a really long time ago. Like, what, 13 or 14 years ago?

Friend:  Was it at Necro?

Me:  Probably. If it was at Necro, since we met through that particular mutual friend, then we probably met at an orgy.

Friend:  That sounds about right.

Me:  Oh, I bet it was that one orgy with [these people] and [this thing was happening]!

Friend:  Yep! It was at that orgy!

Me:  Hard to tell, all the orgies kinda blended together over the years.

My Dancer Friends:  0.0

My Non-Dancer, Very Vanilla Friend:  I think I'm in over my head here. How many people get to casually mention that they met at an orgy?

Me:  Well, in our circle of friends...

Non-Dancer:  Never mind.

#ISometimesForgetTheRestOfTheWorldDoesNotDoTheThingsIDo #SoManyOrgiesTheyAllBlendTogether #ThisIsActuallyMyLife #AndYetIDoNotHaveSexNearlyAsOftenAsPeopleThink #PolyamoryOftenMeansMoreEmotionalProcessingThanSex
joreth: (being wise)
2020-04-29 09:47 pm

Friends, Drugs, And Bodily Autonomy

https://www.quora.com/My-friend-fed-me-a-pot-brownie-knowing-that-I-hate-drugs-and-am-an-athlete-This-was-a-month-ago-and-Im-still-furious-Am-I-overreacting-or-should-I-involve-her-parents-school-officials/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper 

Q. My friend fed me a pot brownie (knowing that I hate drugs and am an athlete).  This was a month ago, and I'm still furious.  Am I overreacting or should I involve her parents/school officials?

A.
Let me tell you a little something about the kind of person who would do this sort of thing.

I react poorly to alcohol.  I do not get a “buzz” or any of the euphoric sensations that other people get.  Instead, my core body temperature actually rises (which is different from simply feeling warm or “flushed” - a core body temperature change is a serious problem, which is why getting a fever is a serious symptom) and I get a burning in my shoulders very similar to a lactic acid burn.  At its best, this is an uncomfortable feeling.

Because of how common alcohol is in our society, people have a really hard time accepting that I do not like to drink.  They see it as “harmless”, which makes people feel entitled to try and push alcohol on me.  With the rising acceptance of marijuana, I am seeing this same trend with pot, which I similarly react poorly to.

So, in my early 20s, I dated a guy who thought of alcohol as completely harmless and didn’t understand how I could react the way I said I did.  He did not believe me, and so took it upon himself to lace some strawberries with alcohol and dip them in chocolate to cover the taste, knowing that chocolate covered strawberries were one of my favorite treats and that chocolate covered strawberries are generally considered one of the more “romantic” foods that a man could offer to a woman.

I noticed the taste right away, because I also strongly dislike the taste of alcohol.  It’s kind of like the thing where some people think that cilantro tastes like soap.  I’m just not wired to enjoy alcohol - it doesn’t react normally with me and I definitely don’t taste it the way other people do.

At the time, I was annoyed that he did not believe me and that he would try to trick me into getting drunk by feeding me laced strawberries.  Alcohol being as culturally accepted as it is, however, I did not recognize the extreme consent violation for what it was.  I mean, even his mother thought it was funny!

He and I did not work out for a variety of reasons that I only later recognized as his refusal to accept my autonomy.  We broke up eventually, but remained on speaking terms.

One day, years later, we were having a phone conversation, and we had gotten into what was becoming our “regular” argument every time we spoke - he insisted that I was The One and why couldn’t I just see that and come back to him, while I insisted that I was quite happy where I was, thank you very much.

But this argument was different.  Somehow we ended up on the subject of what if I had gotten pregnant while we were dating.  He told me the next thing in a way that was not a confession, but managed to come across as threatening.  He admitted that he had been sabotaging the condoms while we were dating, hoping to get me pregnant so that I would have been tied to him forever.

I told him that I had always been pro-choice and I would have had an abortion if I had ever gotten pregnant when I was not planning on having a child at that time.

He got really quiet for a moment, and then when he spoke next, his voice was low and intense.  He very calmly said that if he ever found out that I had aborted “his child”, he would hunt me down and kill me.

This is the mindset of a person who does not believe in bodily autonomy.

His brother, by the way, was at this time serving time in prison for killing his own wife and infant child.  So this was not an idle threat.  And he phrased it in the future tense, meaning that if he ever found out even sometime in the future that I had hidden an abortion from him, even some 30 years later he would still hunt me down and kill me.

Of course he would have no issue with drugging me with alcohol without my consent.  He fundamentally did not believe that I am a person who is entitled to make decisions about my own body.  In his very core, he believes that what he wants for my body trumps my own wants for my body.

Your friend might not actually believe she has the right to murder you if you do something to your body that she doesn’t like.  But she still does not believe that your wants for your body are the only wants that matter.  She still believes she is entitled to do things to your body, not only without your consent, but against your express consent.

This is a dangerous person.  You were fortunate that no lasting harm actually came to you, either in the form of injury under non-consensual drugs in your system or with regards to your athletic endeavors.  You got an empty chamber in that Russian Roulette game.

But she’s the one supplying the gun and the bullets.  You, or someone else, might not be so lucky next time.  And there will be a next time, because she doesn’t see anything dangerous with holding a gun to someone’s head.  It’s just “pot”, right?  What does your right to your own body matter, when her beliefs about your body contradict it?

Maybe nothing extreme or serious happened as a consequence of this one situation.  That’s not the point.  The point is her beliefs.  She does. not. believe. in. your. bodily. autonomy.

This is a very dangerous person to be around.  You are absolutely right to continue to be upset at this.  I won’t tell you that you “should” involve any set of authorities, because only you can decide how invested you want to be in holding her accountable.  But I think she *ought* to be held accountable and she needs a very hard lesson in what autonomy is and why she is not entitled to anyone else’s, before she harms someone else.
joreth: (sex)
2020-04-29 08:25 pm
Entry tags:

Nostalgia For Love Found And Lost

Just saw one of those sponsored listicle things with a headline about people revealing "shocking" things they overheard while pretending to be asleep.

I am immediately awash in memories of high school, when I was a theater tech geek dating an actor and partying with other theater kids, which meant co-ed sleepovers with minimal parental oversight and very ... well, progressive? teenagers.  At one party in particular, in the wee hours of the morning, my high school sweetheart and I stole away from the drinking and loud improv to find any empty room for sleep and some private time.  We found a parlor or living room of sorts occupied by one of our best friends.

I met them both on the same day, at another party.  They were good friends with each other and I got invited by a friend of a friend.  I developed an instant crush on both of them.  They developed enough of a liking of me that we maintained contact after that party.  I decided that I could not decide which one I liked best, so the one who would ask me out first is the one I would date (I did not know of poly back then, and likely one of them would not have gone for it, although the other might have).

So the guy who would become my high school sweetheart asked me out first and I put away my crush on the other one for many years, until we reconnected after college.  But that's another story.

Back to high school.  Our friend was sleeping on the couch in this parlor but no one else was there.  We entered quietly, whispered to him to see if he was awake but not to wake him if he wasn't.  Satisfied that he was asleep, we made our joined bed on the floor next to the couch.

And then, as teenagers in love without parental supervision tend to do, we got up to shenanigans.  We tried to be as quiet as possible.  We even stopped several times, thinking he had awakened, but got going again when we were sure he hadn't.  And at least once we whispered his name just to make sure he was asleep.

Years later, in the days of the internet but before social media, I wondered whatever happened to our friend. So I did a search, probably on Netscape.  After several days of dial-up searching, I found his name mentioned in an archived copy of his old fraternity's newsletter.  I emailed the then-current frat president, explained who I was and asked for help locating him.  He passed along my contact info, and a short time later, our friend contacted me.

We got to know each other again after our long absence, and we discovered that our adult selves were even better friends than our teen selves were.  So we got to talking regularly.

Our conversations turned intimate, and on one late night call, that night at the party came up.  It turns out, he had been awake for almost the entire time my high school sweetheart and I were having sex.  He wasn't sure exactly when he woke up, but judging by how long we went, it must have been early into it, although after we had gotten started, since it was our sounds that woke him.

Apparently, he had not, up until that time, had any particular interest in voyeurism.  I mean, he was a teenage boy, so he wasn't UNinterested, but it wasn't a capital I-Interest.

However, after revisiting that memory many times after that night, and with our conversation years later, he came to the conclusion that his strong feelings for the both of us (platonic for my sweetheart, not quite platonic for me but resigned to me being his best friend's girlfriend) added to whatever excitement he felt at hearing sex happening nearby, and it turned into a full-blown Thing for him to listen to sex after that night.

I'm not an exhibitionist.  This may be surprising to some of you who know me for my frank discussions and comfort in public sex spaces, but I'm actually extremely inhibited when it comes to other people witnessing my sexual activity.  Except for that night. Remember? I had a crush on him too.  I merely put it aside because I was in a monogamous relationship and I respected both of them and their friendship with each other too much to fuck with it.

And since he similarly respected and cared for his best friend and our relationship, he just accepted that I was unavailable and never let on to me that he had anything other than platonic feelings, nor would he open any doors that might hurt his best friend, or risk insulting or offending me.  So I filed my crush away and didn't act on it, but it never disappeared.

So, with my love and attraction for my high school sweetheart, and my admiration and attraction to our mutual friend, even though I genuinely did not want to disturb him, the thought that he might wake up (and not disapprove) was very appealing.  It's possibly the only time I was not inhibited by the presence of other people during sex.

Except for that whole "don't want to disturb his sleep or make him uncomfortable" thing.  But, I mean, I wasn't personally bothered by the idea of him witnessing and it didn't hamper my enjoyment of the sex knowing that he might.  To find out later that he not only didn't disapprove but was awake and enjoyed the whole thing was ... exciting.

Neither of us knew if my sweetheart would have been amenable to a threesome at that time (or if each other was, for that matter), but neither did either of us want to risk our three-way friendship in that moment to find out.

He was content to merely witness in silence (figuring that he was there first so if we really didn't want him listening in, we should have gone elsewhere - a reasonable assumption, to be fair), while I enjoyed the feeling of not knowing if we were being observed by him or not but hoping we were.

Much later, as we reconnected and learned of the other's perspective in our little high school drama, I now have this wonderful memory of high school sex, sneaky sex, illicit sex, with a former partner whom I still have warm feelings for while a crush and later partner silently observed, planting a seed that would change the entire course of his sexual development and leading to the eventual culmination of our mutual crushes.

That memory, which was always a pleasant one because of my continued good friendship with my high school sweetheart, became one of my top treasured memories after hearing what that event was like from our friend's perspective.  Every time I think of that night, remembering the fun time I was having and later learning about the fun time our friend was having, I'm filled with such a warm and fuzzy sense of nostalgia.

Imagine that - a clickbaity listicle headline actually produced something worthwhile, at least for me.  So I'm going to go fall asleep now to rose-colored memories of one of the few things that didn't suck about high school, and a sweet longing for a departed friend.

Miss you, Sweetheart. I am forever grateful for my time with you and your continued presence in my life.

Miss you, Love. The world is a little dimmer without your presence in it anymore.
joreth: (Nude Drawing)
2019-08-19 05:08 pm

I Wish Kissing Buddies Was A Thing

I've said this before: I wish Kissing Buddies were A Thing; considered "nonsexual" even among monos, even if it produces sexual arousal; just friends who match your kissing style that you don't want to shag, just kiss. Maybe you're mono so you choose not to, maybe they are and choose to remain sexually fidelitous to someone else, maybe you're asexual or have a low libido and just aren't interested in more, maybe they're not the gender you're attracted to but they're still a good kisser, whatever.

I have a couple of people in my past who I had the opportunity to make out with who, for whatever reason, I can't anymore and I miss it. But I don't want sex with them. Cuddling with platonic friends is generally acceptable, especially if at least one of the people doing the cuddling is or presents as a woman, but kissing is not, and I think that's a shame.

And unless that other person is part of the radical relationship paradigm shifting communities that I am, it's not even very realistic to propose the possibility, because they (or their mono partners) will just get weird about it. At best, they'll reject the proposal, which is fine because I can handle rejection, but it still leaves me in the same position had I not asked - no Kissing Buddies and wishing that was A Thing.

Cunning Minx once coined the phrase "boobiesexual" for someone who was just really into boobs but not so much doing other stuff. Perhaps I'm part hermitsexual and part kiss-sexual? Smoochsexual? Neckingsexual? Snogosexual?

#DefinitelyNotAsexualOrDemisexualThough
joreth: (::headdesk::)
2018-04-19 09:48 pm

Love Is All You Need ... As Long As You Get A Good Contract First

I cannot stress enough just how important it is to plan your exit strategies with ANYONE you have any kind of legal connection or financial ties with - family, lovers, friends, strangers, exes, coworkers, anyone.  I don't know why this is such a difficult concept for people to accept, but you NEED to put down in writing how to split up with people when you're dealing with anything financial or legal.  And you need to do this when y'all still like each other.

If you get married, get a fucking pre-nup.  Like, seriously, get one.  It doesn't take the "romance" out of it, and it doesn't show a lack of trust.  It's a goddamn necessity.

If you are already married and didn't get a pre-nup, get a post-nup.  It's basically the same thing, but with all the verb tenses changed.  And the most recent post-nup supersedes any prior post-nup and any pre-nup, just automatically, so keep doing post-nups even if you did get a pre-nup, as your various assets and liabilities and debts change over time.

If you go into business together, don't just talk about how you're going to split the business while you're in it, talk about how to LEAVE the business.  PUT IT IN WRITING.  Discuss if one of you wants to leave the business to the other, how can you get out, and discuss if you both want to end the business, how you're going to split the assets and the debts.

Assume a worst case scenario.  Assume that the other person has been body-swapped with their double from the mirror universe and they are suddenly, without warning, totally evil.

No, seriously, have fun with this discussion - if one of you turns evil, how can you write an exit strategy to save the other one?  Then switch roles, is the exit strategy still fair now that the other person is evil?  Role play this out while y'all are on good terms and can laugh at the absurdity of the thought that one of you would try to screw over the other.

Because I guaran-fucking-tee that everyone who has been screwed over would have laughed at the absurdity of that thought at the beginning of their relationship too.

I have some friends who are going through a divorce.  OK, I know quite a few people going through divorces, so let's take a look at one hypothetical couple.  They're poly, they're "ethical", they totally agree with everything in More Than Two and everything I write about power imbalances, abuse, feminism, privilege, etc. They know a few things about a few things.

One of them is being blindsided by what appears to be the other one pulling a stunt like my abusive ex - after years of controlling behaviour that the first one never recognized, the second one is going around telling everyone else that the first one was abusing the second one all along. And they have all this legal crap to untangle.

One of our mutual buddies and I were talking the other day.  The mutual said to me, "I had a bad feeling about That One when I first met them. But I didn't say anything because This One was clearly smitten, and what do I know?  I had just met them.  But, do you think, maybe if I had said something back then, This One could have been warned that That One would do these things and maybe done something to protect themself?"

I had to say "no, I didn't think there is anything we could have said to protect This One, because some of us DID say something.  Over the course of their marriage, several of us, independently, did tell This One that we saw some red flags about That One, and a couple people actually argued with This One pretty strenuously, trying to make This One see.

But when anyone expressed concern about how deep This One was getting entangled, and how that was leaving them open for the potential for That One to do some fucked up shit, This One always said 'well that's just silly, That One would NEVER do something like that!  So I just won't worry about it.'

This One kept insisting, to everyone who brought up concerns, that none of us really knew That One like This One did.  Which is true, of course.  Nobody who said anything about the red flags we saw really got to know That One very well.  They were often absent from group events and did not reach out to most of This One's friends independently.  So we had to concede that point.  And This One felt confident that everyone coming to them with red flags was independently wrong for our own reasons, so there was nothing for This One to be concerned about."

All my friend could say after that conversation with me was "Huh. So there's nothing we could have done then?  Well, that's depressing.  I guess people just have to get bitten on the ass then."

No one who ever ended up on opposing tables in a bitter divorce court ever walked down the aisle and thought "y'know what? I bet, some day, this dearest angel, whom I love with every fiber of my being, will probably turn out to be the biggest asshole in the world!  But I love them so much, I'll just jump head-first anyway!"

Everyone who has ever found themselves at the point of a metaphorical sword held by a former lover thought that their lover was an OK person in the beginning, not likely to do anything horrible enough to financially ruin them or damage their standing with the law.

Take my aphorism about rules and look at it backwards here.  I often say that anyone who would follow the rules doesn't need them and anyone who wants to do the things against the rules, the rules won't stop them.

When it comes to legal and financial stuff, however, things are a little different.  You can't control another human being with rules without tromping on their agency, but you can protect yourself from *them* attempting to control or harm *you* using the leverage of money or business power with some contracts.  If they're truly good-hearted, compassionate people who care about your well-being, then they will WANT to protect you with documents, so things like pre-nups should not be offensive to them because if they really loved you, they would want to see you protected and cared for.

And since y'all are so confident that this is just hypothetical anyway because your love will never die and you are both the paragons of virtue you think of each other, then it doesn't matter if you have legal paperwork or not because you both know you'll never have to use it.  So might as well have it and not need it.  Just like any other insurance policy.

If they are one of these monsters in disguise who is managing to completely fool you, then you *need* that paperwork.

In addition, one of you will die before the other one.  That is almost guaranteed.  Part of these exit strategies can and should encompass how to handle assets and debts and property in the event of that kind of split as well.  Nobody likes talking about death, but too fucking bad. Put on the big kid pants and have the awkward conversation already. Like with most things in poly, or in any healthy relationship, if you want to adult with other people, you have to have awkward conversations, so roll up your sleeves and hitch up your britches and start talking.

And while you're playing at being grown ups with the conversation about death, you might as well go all the way and talk about splitting up too.  It's awkward and unsexy and you might learn something about your partner that you don't like as you hear them talk about how to divvy up property and cash, but if you can't handle that kind of conversation, you shouldn't be entangling yourself in finances or business or legal shit in the first place.

Treat your financial and legal presence as seriously as you treat your sexual presence - use some goddamn protection, and if you can't talk about it with each other, then you shouldn't be doing it with each other.

#IMaybeJustALittleAnnoyedAtWatchingYetMoreFriendsFindThemselvesInBadLegalSituationsBecauseTheirFormerLoverWouldNEVERdoThat
joreth: (boxed in)
2018-03-23 08:48 pm

Reminder: You Know Someone (me) Who Has Had To Pull A Weapon In Self Defense Multiple Times

This is your occasional reminder that I have actually had to pull my knife on a man 3 times in my life, since I started carrying one.

Assault, harassment, and intimidation are regular, "normal" parts of most women's lives, and definitely a part of mine. In absolutely none of the cases where I had to pull a knife out and brandish it was I "dressed for it" or "asking for it" or "sending mixed signals".

In all 3 cases, it was actually after work and I was wearing my military cargo pants and steel toe boots with no makeup or attempt at hair styling. I was in a casino lounge with my other coworkers, minding our own business and not interacting with any other patrons, at a party at a friend's house in a conversation with my ex (who was not the one I pulled the knife on), and at a gas station working on my car.

There are *lots* of times when, in retrospect, I should have pulled a knife on a date or a "friend", but because they were not strangers, I just kept giving them the benefit of the doubt and trying to find non-violent ways out of the situation. I even remained "friends" with many of them or continued to date them long after the fact (or while the behaviour was ongoing).

Being attacked by strangers, while common, happens less often than being assaulted by "friends" and partners. Had I pulled a knife on someone I had some kind of relationship with, I guarantee you that I would have been accused of "overreacting" or of being the aggressor or the "assaulter" for having escalated it to violence with a weapon. We are taught to fear Stranger Danger when the worst of our danger comes from intimates.

But, the thing is, it has *never* occurred to me to pull a weapon on a partner or a "friend". Because each and every time, the severity of the assault is not fully recognized until afterwards, when I've had time to see that my brain won't stop replaying the incident and I'm getting more and more upset over it, since I couldn't afford to react in the moment or else risk escalating something, namely his wrath.

My instinctual response is to freeze, make myself smaller, and smile to placate him into thinking it's not a big deal so that he doesn't get angry at me. The last time I actively fought back against a "friend" who was assaulting me, I got my shoulder dislocated for the effort. I have not fought back since then (I think I was 14?). I go very still instead.

When my ex-fiance used to sexually assault me at night by touching my genitals when he thought I was asleep, if I would get pissed off at him and try to leave the room to go sleep on the couch, as I was attempting to get out of bed, he would tell me that if I left right then, my precious figurine collection (which I loved dearly, almost everything in that collection was a gift) would be damaged.

I know now that this is a clear cut case of abuse, but that's not something I knew back then and I'm not entirely sure that, had I been told, I would have recognized it as abuse while I was going through it. He never once laid a hand on me in anger, or threatened to, and I never feared that he would. *That* was something I would recognize as abuse. But not the sexual assault and not the threat of property damage.

It would never have occurred to me to respond with violence to someone who was not being violent towards me, particularly with someone I loved. Partner abuse is a much more complex and insidious thing than stranger assaults.

And I have had enough of both that I have pulled a knife in self-defense 3 times so far. I'm lucky none of them had a gun.
joreth: (boxed in)
2018-02-23 11:41 pm

Friendships Can Be Abusive

"Friendships can be abusive. It took me a long time to realize that a friend can manipulate you, emotionally abuse you, gaslight you, and that the effects of that trauma can last for years after the friendship ends. Abuse also knows no distance; one of the most damaging friendships I ever had had thousands of miles between us. We haven't spoken in years and I'm only recently discovering the depths to which that friendship has affected me to this day. I didn't even want to admit the fact that it was abusive in nature even though she's not in my life anymore because her hold on me is still present, and because I didn't think friendships could be classified as abusive relationships. But they absolutely can be. Please be careful and take [care] of yourselves and if you think a friend is crossing a line, please reach out." ~ jacksisko
When I was in high school, I had a best friend. Because I tend to nurture post-breakup friendships, I did some post hoc analysis with my exes. With 3 different guys (every guy I was involved with one way or another while she and I were friends), I discovered that she contacted each of them to deliberately mislead them about me.

Each guy, she tried to convince I was cheating on him. One of them, I did end up cheating on him, but only after she told him that I already was, and I did so because instead of confronting me about it, he just turned into an asshole and I turned to another guy friend for comfort that led to sex, instead of dumping him for being an asshole (I was a teenager with my own relationship issues).

One guy just flat out didn't believe her. We're still fairly close.

And the third guy I wasn't even dating, but he was a friend of mine who was actually obsessive about me and was girlfriendzoning me, trying to be my "friend" so that I'd eventually recognize him as superior to all those "losers" (i.e. like the awesome guy above who refused to believe her lies) and dump them to be with him instead.

It was only after she ghosted me on our high school graduation day (devastating me on what was already an emotionally challenging day) and the final romantic relationship breakup happened a year later and then all the post-breakup repairs were done with all 3 guys that I found out she had pulled the same stunt with each of them.

As I connected the dots on the patterns of our relationship with the benefit of more information and hindsight, she turned out to be extremely jealous of anyone who was taking up my time and attention and was manipulating everyone around her and gaslighting me about their behaviour in response to her manipulation to control our friendship so that she was my sole focus.

She is one of the main reasons why I held onto the Chill Girl persona for so long - I'm not one of Those Girls, I don't do Drama, I just don't Get Along with women, blah blah blah. It's taken me a really long time to learn how to trust women again, and I have never gotten over my physical withdrawal from them. To this day, I still can't initiate a cuddly, affectionate relationship with women like I had with her. I can only respond to overtures of affection, but I can't initiate (once an affectionate pattern has been established, I can, but I can't be the one to start that pattern).

My cousin also tried to develop an abusive relationship with my sister. She would go into a rage if my sister didn't put her first, didn't read her mind and anticipate her emotions. I've told the story before about my grandfather hosting a BBQ in my sister's honor when she came to visit (after having moved up north from living in their neighborhood for a year or two), and my cousin just going ballistic at my sister for receiving the invitation from our grandfather instead of directly from my sister. It didn't seem to matter that it wasn't my sister's party, or that my sister didn't even know about it at first. What mattered is that my sister wasn't the one to extend the invitation. She did shit like this all the time.

So, yeah, you can have abusive friends too. Abuse is about control. It's a belief that one is justified in controlling another. Platonic relationships do not offer some kind of magical vaccine against one's deeply ingrained belief that they are justified in controlling other people.

If anything, I might suggest that women, with our social permission to develop deeply intimate platonic relationships, can be particularly prone or at risk of doing this to others, and also likely at risk of having it done to us by abusive men we are not dating but who *want* us to date them, because girlfriendzoning seems like a situation just ripe for someone with beliefs about entitlement and controlling others to obtain what they feel they are owed.
joreth: (anger)
2017-11-26 01:11 am

If I Had Known This Sooner I Still Would Have Made Exactly The Same Mistakes

I see a lot of people say things like "I wish I had known this lesson before, then I wouldn't have ..." I've said it myself. But I also spend LOTS of time repeating things in poly forums that the community has collectively learned over the decades the hard way.

In my more cynical moments, I don't think most of us would really have changed things had we known because some of this shit WAS known. I see plenty of people being told what will happen, who get *mad* that people are warning them, and go off and do it anyway.

How many times have you had someone ask your advice, not listened to you, the thing you predicted happened, then they complain about it happening? Or they do it again next opportunity?

My ranting on the internet is predicated on the premise that we don't need to burn our own hands in order to learn that fire is hot. Our entire educational system is based on the idea that people learn things the hard way first and then we tell others about it so we can keep moving forward as a society, each new generation standing on the shoulders of those who came before.

But no, let's continue to fuck up our relationships and governments as if we've never seen or done this shit before. And then wail about "if only we'd known ahead of time, we would have done it differently!"

Y'all know. You just don't want to know.
joreth: (polyamory)
2017-09-10 01:47 pm

Why You Polys Gotta Have So Many Terms?

Why do poly people always need to invent new words? What's wrong with all the words we already have?

Because, even when we use the words we already have, people don't understand what we're saying, thanks to narrow gender roles and social expectations.

I'm watching a video where a couple of women are professional dance partners and they're talking about the nature of their relationship. They go by the professional title of The Decavita Sisters (I think - I wasn't really paying attention to their names; a big flaw I have in general). So the interviewer asks about other siblings, and they admit that they're not biological sisters. They're asked to go on, so they talk about meeting "a very, very long time ago" and how close they became very quickly, and eventually they became sisters. "We adopted each other".

The interviewer's next question was "so, are you *together*? Or just dance partners?" The women both look at her and repeat "no, we're sisters. We adopted each other." So the interviewer asks "and you changed your name legally?" They look at her as if to say "well, yeah, we adopted each other, that's kinda what you do," but they answered much more politely with a "yes, it's in our passports."

She then asks whose name they took, so the women have to explain that they made it up, and that they are "the only in the whole world with that name." The interviewer is just stunned and baffled by this. She has no idea what to do with this information. To me, this makes perfect sense. They became sisters, so they are now sisters. I don't understand the confusion. "Sisters" is the relationship that they have, therefore, they are.

I think my adopted background helps me in polyamory. I intuitively recognize families of choice. I have a sister, because we were raised together as sisters. We're not biologically related, but we're still sisters because that's our relationship.

When I was in junior high school, my clique did a thing where we all took on familial titles. I have no idea why we thought this was a good thing at the time, we just did. So I had 3 sons, I think, and a sister, and an aunt maybe? I don't remember them all, just that 3 guys were my "sons". We were all the same age, and there were maybe 10 or 12 of us in this "family". I think I drew out a chart. As I do.

Then, in high school, I had my 5-40 Fone Crew - my besties who all hung around the only pay phone on campus during our lunch break (40 minute lunch break, 5 days a week). Our boyfriends were all friends too (I introduced my friends to his friends when we started dating and everyone kinda just paired up), and we were the first in our school to all have pagers because our boyfriends were older and all had them, so we sat by the phone so we could all send each other l33t-type pager messages. We were also a family of sorts, and we had our own terminology for our group.

I was just in a thread discussing a term for a metamour who is technically no longer a metamour because one or both of you are not dating the person who connected you, but you both still *feel* like metamours (the word is metafore, btw, www.theinnbetween.net/polyterms.html#metafore).

There are 2 uses for the term "metamour" - one that means just the connecting line, which is "one's partner's other partner", and the other that means a special kind of direct connection between two people who have a mutual romantic partner in common. Both are valid and necessary definitions.

Because of the nature of poly relationships, as different from other forms of non-monogamy, which builds more interconnected, entangled, and interdependent types of relationships, it's important to acknowledge our partners' other partners as valid and deserving of recognition. So we have a word to call them.

I really like the fact that my metamours are MY metamours, not "something over there on the other side of my partner that he does that has nothing to do with me". I think there's a certain level of respect inherent in the metamour relationship that other forms of non-monogamy don't require in their partner's other partner relationships.

But this label doesn't tell us what *kind* of relationship we have with each other, just *how* we are connected. I make the analogy to cousins and in-laws: saying that someone is my cousin or my sister-in-law tells you how we are connected via other relationships between us, but it doesn't tell you if we like each other, or get along, or what. But it does tell you that we are *family*.

And I think that's an enormously important concept - the idea of acknowledging and respecting how people are connected to each other without dictating or prescripting how that relationship ought to look.

The other definition *is* about the nature of the relationship. Some poly people don't bestow the label "metamour" without that direct connection between them - usually an independent friendship or a sibling-like bond. We often hear about sister-wives (controversial because of the associations with religiously determined polygyny), and about metamours who see each other as "brothers" or co-husbands, etc.

This is why "metafore" came into being. This is when people feel a special closeness that is related to their shared connection to a mutual partner. It's difficult to really explain, but there is a special quality to the closeness between people who have a romantic partner in common that doesn't exist in any other relationship bond. So when the connection to the mutual partner is severed, that closeness can sometimes remain in spite of the break, because of that shared linkage in our history.

Or, in my case with my 2 metafores, that bond gets even closer when we both went through breakups with our mutual partner. I have people whom I like and respect a great deal who are former metamours, and I have 2 metafores because that bond is unique to that situation of having once been close metamours and remaining in (or strengthening) that close bond.

People ask why we need all these terms. And I think that's because society gives us such strict roles, that anything outside of that role doesn't make any sense without a new word to cover it. Instead, society tries to give us a blanket term, "friend", to cover *everything* from slightly more than acquaintance to "best" friend who can often be a more intimate, stronger bond than romantic partnerships.

Sex And The City, for as problematic as it is, was an excellent example of "friends" who are "more than" the romantic relationships in their lives. No matter what happened in their romantic relationships, their friendships were their anchors, their partners, the core of their lives. That show was instrumental for me in being my first step towards learning to see the relationship between women as valuable, and as necessary, even for tomboy Chill Girls like me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx5N2b94BSk

 

We can't use "friend" because that means too many things, so it doesn't cover it. But, at the same time, we have a culture that privileges romantic couples. Romantic partners are privileged and prioritized above everything else, except possibly the parent / child relationship.

This is why the SATC show was so controversial. The characters were accused of "using men like Kleenex" because all their romantic partnerships took a backseat to their platonic friendships. The only men who made the cut were the ones who basically accepted that they came in second to "the girls".

Normally, if a platonic friendship interferes with a romantic relationship, it is culturally expected that the platonic friendship will have to end unless the romantic relationship isn't The One. Nobody ever asks what happens if the romantic relationship interferes with the platonic friendship. Except abuse specialists.

If you get invited to a wedding, your legal spouse is pretty much automatically invited. I've never heard of anyone sending a wedding invitation to one half of a married couple and then getting upset when they RSVP for the spouse too. But bringing along "just a friend" is very controversial. It's often seen as the "consolation prize" - who you invite when you can't get a date. And you need to ask permission to do so. And it's totally cool for the bride to say no, but saying no to bringing a spouse? That's pretty uncool.

Legal marriage confers a whole bunch of legal rights and responsibilities that are *just not available* through any other means. Like immigration, for example, and not testifying against someone in court. If you try to use these rights, the government makes you "prove" that the person you're using them with is a "legitimate" spouse, meaning a *romantic partner*. If you aren't romantically involved with your spouse, that's actually grounds for an annulment in many areas, which means that the marriage never legally existed in the first place.

This is my entire problem with legal marriage. I should be able to enter into any legal contract with any other person I want, providing we are otherwise eligible to enter into legal contracts with each other. My ability to enter into a contract with someone should not hinge on something as subjective and ethereal and, frankly, nobody's fucking business, as romantic feelings for them. If they are of legal age and "sound" mind to give consent, that's all that should be necessary for entering into a contract with them.

But before I go too far down the rabbit hole of my moral objections to legal marriage, let's get back to the point. If two people seem exceptionally close to each other, we just automatically assume they must be romantically involved. Because romantic couple privilege.

If we call them "friend", it's not descriptive enough, even though it's true, because "friend" covers too many different things. But "friend", for as broad as it is, is also limited in its own way, *because* of that romantic couple privilege. As in, "just" friends. Since romantic couples are privileged, everything else is "just", no matter how close those "friends" actually are.  So we come up with other terms. "Sisters" (but, if you don't have the same parents, how can you be sisters?), soulmates (but that's for romantic relationships!), metamours, anchors, nesting partners, core partners...

We need these terms because we're not *allowed* to be these things otherwise. Two women are supposed to be close because women have certain gendered expectations of their relationships and women (apparently) are all nurturing and emotionally intimate. But they can't be "too" close, because then they'd have to be romantic partners.

We can only understand that level of intimacy without sex as siblings. Never mind the fact that lots of sisters aren't that close. Only "sisters" can be that close. Blood vs. water, and all that (and don't even get me started on the irony of that cliché in context).

I don't really have a point, I think. I just heard this bit of dialog in a video, and it came on the heels of a discussion of metafores and people complaining about yet another poly term and why is it even necessary when we have the word "friend", and I got all annoyed at the interviewer's confusion because our current vocabulary is simultaneously too broad to be clear and too narrow to allow for the diversity of intimate connections.

In other words, our culture is incredibly stunted when it comes to recognizing and accepting intimacy. And that irritates me.

joreth: (anger)
2017-05-30 05:51 pm

Online Blocking Etiquette

*Sigh* Let's go over this again.

DO NOT CONTACT SOMEONE WHO HAS BLOCKED YOU.

When someone blocks you, it means that they don't want to talk to you anymore. Any attempt to contact them* after that on another platform, using another profile, or using another method entirely is a blatant disregard for their boundaries.

If the person who blocked you didn't say it was temporary, didn't give you conditions under which it would be appropriate to contact them again, or didn't un-block or otherwise reach out to you, then contacting them while blocked is boundary pushing and probably the reason why they resorted to blocking in the first place.

If I have to block someone I know in real life, I will often give them the benefit of the doubt and block them only in that medium where they are pushing me. I am trusting them to be grown-up enough not to keep pushing, not to keep violating my boundaries, not to look for ways around my block. I'm trusting them to understand that this is the online equivalent of hanging up the phone or walking out of the room during an argument and dropping the subject and not following after me to keep going.  Maybe, with time, I'll unblock and attempt to reconnect sometime in the future.

When I block someone and they try to contact me in other ways, particularly if they contact me in other ways *to continue the conversation / argument*, this only confirms the reason why I blocked in the first place and is a guaranteed way to make sure that the blocking is permanent and across all forms of contact.  This should not ever have to be explained. You, who does this, are the reason why my online profiles are so ranty. You are exactly who I am ranting about.



*There are some exceptions to this. Sometimes we have to cut off contact with people that we can't afford to cut off contact in every single manner.  For instance, needing to cut off social contact with a boss or coworker but still needing to keep in contact in a professional capacity; or co-parenting with an abusive ex.

If you have been blocked by someone online but you have a LEGITIMATE other relationship with them that requires LEGITIMATE contact with them in this other capacity, and you can keep your contact with them limited to this legitimate other relationship, then it's probably not a boundary violation.



Normally I have no problem blocking people who are becoming a pain in the ass, but when it's a *friend* who says *several times* that he will back out of an argument and then refuses to do so, sometimes I have to hang up the phone for him. But I'd rather not, and it hurts to do it.

I already know that when I lose my temper, I'll say things that I will later regret. So when I back out of an argument, I back out. I know that I can't be trusted to have a productive conversation when I'm too emotionally invested in my position to really hear the other side.  If you have the foresight to know that about yourself too, then seriously, back out when you say you're going to. Because I guarantee, no matter what the person on the other side of the argument is like, you will only make things worse if you stay in an argument past the point that even you recognize that you need to take a break from it.

The other person could be the best, most calm and collected arguer ever, or they could be a total douchebag, and either way, if you're not in the right emotional space for the argument, anything you say is going to make things worse. Which is why I back out when I'm getting pissed off. Unfortunately, though, online spaces don't offer very good ways to "back out" and they rely on the other person's cooperation or nuking them.

I wish FB had an option to just, say, put someone in a time-out. I mean, I know that you can unblock people later, but it's so ... final, so harsh. Maybe I just want to stop someone from talking at me for a while. It's like, if you're in an argument with someone in person, you can leave the room. But if you're in an argument with someone at a *party*, then you have to either leave the party to prevent them from following you around the party to continue arguing or kick them out of the party.

Sometimes, neither is an acceptable option for the circumstances. Sometimes, I just want someone to stop talking at me while I go into the "quiet room" at the party, or go talk with someone else on the other side of the room. I can turn off FB for a while and let them rant and rave at an empty inbox, but then I can't wander around FB. That's me leaving the party. Besides, then they're still ranting and raving and those messages will be there when I get back. Leaving might prevent *me* from saying something I don't want to say, but it doesn't make someone else take the space they need but won't take. And obviously I can't kick *them* off FB (nor would I want to).

Unfriending & unfollowing aren't always the right options either. When the problem is that someone I know posts shit that I don't want to see, then those are two reasonable options. But when the problem is that someone keeps talking at me, unfriending and unfollowing don't prevent that.

And, maybe I don't *want* to actually unfriend someone. I grew up understanding that friends and family argue sometimes, and it's not the end of the relationship. Sometimes those arguments are some pretty ugly fights, even, and it still doesn't mean that the relationship *has* to end over it.

I've been reading some stuff (citations not at hand atm) that suggests that there is a point in an argument at which nothing productive is happening because the participants are "flooded", meaning too emotional, and taking a break at that point significantly increases the chances of a resolution post-break. My family did this intuitively. I think it's one of the reasons why I maintain such strong emotional ties to members of my family who have such different worldviews from me.

Sometimes I just don't want to be in *this* argument right *now* and the other person doesn't seem to have the self-control to stop arguing. But, for whatever reason, I don't want to nuke the relationship. It would be nice to have, like, a 24-hour Wall of Silence, where neither of us can message each other or comment on each other's posts, until we've both had some space and time to calm down. But, y'know, you're still friends, and maybe you can even still see each other's posts and still interact in groups or mutual friends' comment threads. You just can't PM them or talk *in their space*.

But as long as people can't seem to help themselves and continue talking at others past the point where even they recognize that they are not in the right frame of mind to be continuing the conversation, I have to resort to blocking.

And I don't like that. There's not enough nuance in our online responses, and I think that hurts us individually and as communities.  Blocking needs to be contextual, but we only have on/off blocking options.  

But it's pretty safe to say that if someone has blocked you in the middle of an argument, don't continue the argument using other means of communication.  If someone has blocked you seemingly out of the blue but left other means of contact open to you, it might be appropriate for you to contact them to ask if you should stay away.  If someone has blocked you in one medium, and you're pretty sure you know why or it was during an argument, but you also have some other reason to be in contact with them, then respect their boundary and restrict your contact of them to those other mediums and that other relationship / reason.
joreth: (Misty in Box)
2017-01-08 11:26 am

The Honeymoon Is Over After 25 Years

Ever since the presidential campaign trail, the effort to work alongside people and make happy small talk yet avoid important topics takes more spoons than normal.

I'm fucking exhausted and distressed at the end of work days because I'm forced to coexist alongside of people who I now know to be truly terrible people. So I can cut off all non-essential contact with my coworkers and lose one of the main reasons why I love my job, or I can very carefully manage dozens of relationships per day to stay within very specific parameters so as to be able to laugh with my coworkers and not be reminded that they honestly don't care about my existence on a daily basis.

I used to love my job. It was one of the things that gave me meaning. It wasn't just a paycheck to me, it was a passion. I still love doing the physical act of my job, but I don't look forward to each day the way I used to anymore.  I used to say that being at work was where I could be the most "me". I had the fewest filters, was the most authentic, and enjoyed life most often. Even a bad day at my job was better than a good day at any other job (and I've worked in something like 30 other industries, so I can say this with some authority).

I no longer feel that I can be my most authentic self at work. I have more filters now, and I have to put on more of an act. This takes a lot of emotional energy and I'm less happy to be working than I used to.

I once said (OK, more than once) that even if I were to win a lottery big enough to live in style for the rest of my life, I would still work at my job because I love it that much and I like staying busy. I don't think I would do that now. I have enough other hobbies that I also love, and enough other interests that I'd like to try, that tip the scales once we add on the weight of managing coworkers' awfulness.

Now, since I still need an income, this is still the job that I love the most and I'd rather do this than any other job. But if money weren't an object, I no longer love my job so much that I'd do it for free. I'd rather be costuming or photographing something or dancing (as long as I don't have to talk to those people either, because here in the South, the dance community is filled with some awful people too), than putting up with my coworkers' bullshit just to be able to climb some truss or fight for a seat behind a camera watching another talking head lecture about quarterly projections.

And I'm sad that my job is no longer one of the greatest passions of my life, or rather that the passion has been dimmed with prolonged exposure to the reality of my coworkers' bigotry and ignorance. After 25 years in the business, I guess the honeymoon is finally over.
joreth: (Xmas Kitties)
2016-12-04 10:30 pm

So, Joreth, How Can I Support You?

If people ever wanted to support me but didn't want to buy a gift or send money and didn't know what else to do, consider buying something from one of my stores for yourself or someone else.

Lots of us don't have much money to be donating or to give a meaningful amount to people we aren't financially entangled with. Or maybe we're not that close to someone and afraid it might be weird to send them cash or gifts. But some of the people we might want to help may be struggling to support themselves with products or services that they provide. If you are going to be spending money on yourself or a loved one anyway, consider looking through the stores that belong to people on your friends lists to see if any of those stores offer the sorts of items you were already thinking of purchasing.

Artists and content creators often live off commission or units sold, so your holiday shopping could not only provide some support to an online friend, but could possibly even contribute to a holiday bonus on top of whatever they make normally from the sale of that item or service.

My stores include:

Poly Tees - www.PolyTees.com
Atheist Tees - www.Atheist-Tees.com
Backstage Tee Shirts - www.BackstageTeeShirts.com

And my entire department at my retail store is up for a cash bonus based on sales for this month. It doesn't matter which employee makes the sale, the whole frame department is credited and the whole frame team gets the bonus. So if you ever wanted custom framing done and have the money for such a high-priced service, now (along with the steep holiday sales) is the time to get them done.

If you live locally to me and want to support my department, but you don't know where I work, PM me. I try to keep my online persona disconnected from my retail place of employment, to avoid any conflicts with the rules regarding social media, so I'd rather not post my store publicly.

Another option is to use someone's Amazon Affiliates link when you buy stuff on Amazon. Some people are Amazon Affiliates, which means that they get a commission when people purchase things through Amazon using special URLs. These people usually have links directly to their products or other people's products on their websites or blogs and those links include the special Amazon Affiliates codes already embedded in the URL for you. There is no additional cost or effort from you. They get a commission from something you were going to purchase anyway and the process is invisible to the buyer. So if you see someone sharing an Amazon link from their website or blog, consider clicking through instead of going to Amazon directly and searching for the items.

And one final option for helping others is a new feature offered by Amazon called Amazon Smile, which donates money to the charity of your choice when you purchase something on Amazon. Their website has more information about how this service works.
"Thanks for sharing your post on how to support you, but is there anything those of us on a tight budget can do that doesn't involve money?"
Why yes, thank you for asking! If you know content creators that you would like to support but can't afford to spend money even to buy things for yourself where a cut would go to the creator, a very important way to support them is to periodically share their content (in the manner in which they approve - don't go sharing artwork without permission or a watermark, for instance, that's a copyright violation).  You can like their Facebook pages, but liking the page once only helps minimally. What's really helpful is to regularly like and share the posts that they make and engage on their pages.

FB's algorithms eventually stop showing page content in your feed if you "like" something once and then never interact again. So you have to keep going back and doing things with their pages. This will continue to show content in your feed, which you can then pass on to people who read *your* feed, thereby showing this creative content to other people who might be able to spend money to support your content creator friend.

You can also support them on other social media platforms, whether they have an account there or not, by sharing their website directly on your social media platform of choice. Again, this brings their wares to the attention of people who *could* possibly afford to buy them, even if you can't or aren't interested in them.

And here's another thing that you can do that is *really* helpful to certain people - leave reviews for their podcasts or any store that offers reviews as a feature.

Podcasting, for the most part, is a net loss in terms of time and financial commitment. Most of us do it as a labor of love. But podcasting costs money. If we're very, very lucky, we'll get donations or we'll get big enough to have sponsors and make enough from the sponsorships that will at least cover our hosting and equipment expenses. You can help support your podcasting friends or idols by listening to their podcasts, donating to their podcasts, posting positive reviews of their podcast on iTunes and Stitcher (or wherever it's available), and sharing their podcast for others to hear.

So, Facebook pages that I operate that bring me money that you can support by sharing and interacting with are listed above. Pages that do not bring me money directly but that make people aware of me who might eventually find their way towards one of my money-making ventures and that are also labors of love that would just feel nice to be supported:

Miss Poly Manners - www.MissPolyManners.com
Poly-ish Movie Reviews - www.PolyishMovieReviews.com

And the podcast that I would love to see some reviews on iTunes to increase my rankings in the iTunes search engines so that more people will find it is Poly-ish Movie Reviews - www.PolyIshMovieReviews.com (with a link for posting a review on the contact page and at the end of every Show Notes).

So, if you're in the giving mood but not for financial contributions, make a post asking your friends to tell you about their creative endeavors so that you can share those endeavors to a wider audience, or, if you already know about them, you can just go ahead and share these endeavors unprompted.
joreth: (Xmas Kitties)
2016-11-18 10:21 pm

My Annual Plea For Y'all To Use Online Wishlists & A Wishlist Recommendation

It's that time again! The time of year when I start reminding people to create online wishlists for holiday gifting!

Gift giving is a complicated social custom with a lot of implicit expectations behind it, and people with different backgrounds often have different (and conflicting) expectations from each other. Some people feel obligated to give, some people feel obligated to accept, some people refuse to give, some people refuse to accept, some people are good at guessing, some people are terrible at guessing, some people feel bad about asking what someone wants, some people feel that it's rude to be asked for specific gift ideas, some people expect others to just magically know or to read hints, some people have monetary limitations, some people have very specific wants and are hard to shop for, some people are easy to shop for ... on and on!

I recommend that everyone creates an online wishlist of things that they want. Many services offer the ability to create multiple wishlists per account and/or "family" accounts so that multiple people in one group can all create (and share) their own wishlists under a single account. I think this is an excellent way for parents to keep an eye on their children's wishlists or to manage the wishlists for the ones too little to manage their own, and for individuals to set up different lists for themselves, such as a personal wishlist and a gift recommendation wishlist, or wishlists with items suitable for different people to view (parents vs. coworkers vs. spouses, for instance) or for different occasions.

This is especially helpful for long-distant relatives wanting to buy gifts for children and who may not know the children well enough to know what to buy or who don't know what the children already own. As a parent, you can create wishlists for your children and just leave them up for holidays and birthdays, periodically coming back to revise the list as the children's interests change over time or as they get things on the list that someone forgot to mark as "purchased".

Here's why I recommend that everyone have an online wishlist - it does several things that I believe help to navigate the complicated expectations behind gift giving:
  1. You can be as specific or as vague about the sorts of things that you want to make sure that you reduce the number of gifts you have to return or that you are not pleased with. With the right wishlist service you can even list non-material things like hugs or donations to charity in your name. I think online wishlists are especially important for people who really aren't into the whole gift exchange thing because they can keep the gifts down to a minimum with specific items or they can specify those non-material gifts I just mentioned.

  2. Nobody has to read your mind to get you the perfect gift in their budget.

  3. If you don't like telling people what you want because it feels too much like you're "asking" for gifts, you can make your wishlist into a "list of things that I want to have someday even if I buy them myself" list, and then other people can choose to look at your list and buy stuff from it or not. But you're not asking anyone for presents. Think of it more like a shopping list that other people can look at and buy from if they want to, rather than a request.

  4. If you have friends or family who are too embarrassed to ask what you want or don't feel comfortable asking for specific things, this relieves them of the burden. They can just look at your list without saying anything to you and buy something that they know you want if they so choose. And you know that whatever they get you will be something you want even if they refused to ask you what you wanted.

  5. You can use the wishlist yourself to remember where you saw that cute thing online that you wanted to buy but didn't want to buy it at the time and now it's several months later and you can't remember what it is! Or you can use your wishlist as a reminder of where you did buy that thing that one time and now you need another one but you can't remember where you originally got it. You can even use it as motivational goals - things you want to save up for.

  6. You don't have to worry about people buying the same item twice like you do when you send out an email to several different people because when something is purchased, it gets removed from the list and other visitors won't even see the item.
Gift Registries for weddings and baby showers are considered a normal, acceptable custom where some people want to buy one person a gift and the recipient gets to specify exactly what they want. Nobody is offended that the recipient lists specific items, nobody is offended that the givers want to know specific item suggestions, and nobody actually has to ask directly for gifts or ask directly what to buy. I think this should apply to all gift-giving events like holidays and birthdays, and even hard-luck times like job loss or illness or funerals, when it might help to have people give useful items to make it through a tough time, because it simplifies the exchange and removes or reduces the sense of obligation that some people feel regarding gift exchange events without removing the joy of gift exchange.

I recently lost my wishlist service and had to go hunting for another one. I had been using the same service since about 2002 and it had every feature in a wishlist that I could possibly have wanted. Now that website is down and has been for months. So I had to attempt to find another service that had all the features I wanted and recreate my wishlist from memory!

I never did find a wishlist service that had *all* of the features of my previous one (nor did I remember all the items on my old list). But I did find only one wishlist service that had *most* of the features I wanted - www.myregistry.com/ :
  • This service is not attached to any particular retailer and I can add items from literally anywhere. I can add items from online stores with a browser plugin button, and I can manually add items that are not online. It also offers the ability to accept cash donations.

  • This service allows me to have several wishlists, so I have a Clothing Wishlist, a Miscellaneous Wishlist, and a Gift Card Wishlist, to make it more manageable to navigate.

  • It also allows me to manually order the items in my list so that visitors see the items in the order that I want them to see them. Visitors can also reorder the list by price, store, and favorites as well as the site allowing the visitor to view items by category. I can create my own categories and assign the items to whatever categories I come up with.

  • This service shows the list of items with a thumbnail of each item, the price, ordering information like size and color, additional notes that I can enter if I want, and a link to the store where the visitor can view and purchase the item.

  • This service offers a browser plug-in and a smartphone app to make it very simple to add items to any of your lists, as well as managing the lists.

  • When visitors click to view or purchase the item, this service will open the store's website in another tab or window so that you do not lose the wishlist itself. It then gives you the option to go back to the wishlist and anonymously mark the item as "purchased" so that no one else will buy the same thing you did. Once I share my wishlist for Christmas, I do not look at my wishlist again until the holiday (and my birthday the next month) is over, so that I will be surprised by my gifts. That way visitors can safely mark items as purchased and still keep it a surprise.
There are two things that this service does not do that my old one did: one is to give me the option to tag my items. Tagging an item allows me to associate multiple tags to each item so that it can be cross-referenced and viewed under several different tags. So, I might have an item that is both a household item and an electronic item and I could tag it with both keywords and visitors who want to look just for household things as well as visitors who want to look just for electronic things would all see this item. The new service only gives me the option of putting items in a single category, so I have to choose - is this a household item or an electronic item?

The other is priority ranking. My old service allowed me to rank my items on a scale of 1-6 with one being "must have" and 6 being "don't buy for me, I'm just thinking about it", which I thought was a very useful feature. Visitors could sort the list by priority order and only look at those things you wanted the most.

But other than these features, this service does everything else that I was looking for. I was willing to give up the tagging because of the categories and I already manually order my list by priority because an extra step to view priority was just a touch too complicated for my parents. But I do miss these features and feel that they made the previous service more valuable to others who don't have my same limitations and made me even more enthusiastic about recommending it. I had to look at and try out more than a dozen different wishlist services before I found this one that even has all of these features! So I'm passing it on so that other people can take advantage of it.

And now, because several people have requested that I do so, I am including a link to my online wishlists for those who want to see them:

www.myregistry.com/giftlist/JorethsClothingWishlist
www.myregistry.com/giftlist/JorethsMiscWishlist
www.myregistry.com/giftlist/JorethsGiftCardsList
www.myregistry.com/giftlist/SquiggleWeddingConDonations