John. wrote:
And you're fellow AFers so you should be nicer.
If only they had had sex more often 
May 16 2007 11:08
May 17 2007 01:04
madashell wrote:
As I said earlier, yes, people can be horribly petty, vindictive and childish when they're upset. But it's not exactly limited to monogamous relationships.
But what's it got to do with being 14?
May 17 2007 04:01
Lone Wolf says:
Quote:
Assuming you did then this, as i said, illustrates why some peeps are just not cut out for less conventional arrangements - there is no shame in this - we are all different
!
Yeah this is all true but what I'm trying to look at is the fact (as I see it ) that serial monogamy is the conventional mode in the first place. Any mode of living that defies the current conventions is going to hit problems, especially when they relate to matters as close to the bone as sexual norms and taboos.
Thanks for the good wishes btw Lone Wolf, I may have painted my personal experience with an open relationship too grimly. It certainly had its upside, and many years later the woman in question is still my friend. But I was amazed by conventional skeletons it shook out of surprising closets.
Um...the guy whose just come out of the 16 year relationship (forgive me, your name is on a previous page and I'm rushing) .......I guess what makes serial monogamy "serial" is the break at the end......often a train wreck where there are kids involved, too often even when there aren't. Monogamy-for-life used to be enforced by ostracism of offenders against it and other kinds of discrimination, I would not want that back. But we seem from where I stand to have settled into an alternative norm where a first marriage or marriage-like partnership is a rite of passage rather than a lifetime commitment and the result is often a lifetime of broken love, "destruction of human solidarity" . I can't see how this can be good.
May 17 2007 05:47
i'm not sure if you're saying that others here are conventional. a bit of a weird thing to point out in friendly discussion, as i was not aware that how unconventaional one is an important political or even ethical point.
May 17 2007 08:21
destruction of 'human solidarity', oh please shut the fuck up.
the relationships which are the most intense will always have the potential to leave people fucked up, bitter, angrry, depressed etc etc. It's the nature of romantic love and to be honest I wouldn't want to exchange it for some castrated leftist hippy wank fantasy where it's all very civilised, level headed and rational, where you do yoga whilst the stinking hippy in the next room fucks the person you love and then youse all sit down to some tofu together.
May 17 2007 11:44
Well exactly - just like in that awful, brilliant lakeside lodge episode of Peep Show season 2. As you imply, the hippie attitude is actually quite compatible with a conservative anxiety about sex, as I think can be seen from this thread. Kind of lifestylism meets Calvinism.
May 17 2007 11:59
revol68 wrote:
destruction of 'human solidarity', oh please shut the fuck up.the relationships which are the most intense will always have the potential to leave people fucked up, bitter, angrry, depressed etc etc. It's the nature of romantic love and to be honest I wouldn't want to exchange it for some castrated leftist hippy wank fantasy where it's all very civilised, level headed and rational, where you do yoga whilst the stinking hippy in the next room fucks the person you love and then youse all sit down to some tofu together.
Tut tut, don't you realise that you can only truly show solidarity with others if you have the emotional range of a pod person on vallium?
May 17 2007 18:36
Steggsie wrote:
Well exactly - just like in that awful, brilliant lakeside lodge episode of Peep Show season 2.
I was thinking of that too.
May 17 2007 20:49
jef costello wrote:
Steggsie wrote:
Well exactly - just like in that awful, brilliant lakeside lodge episode of Peep Show season 2.I was thinking of that too.
That is the episode i have had in mind throughout the whole thread and when i referred to Marks' character earlier...such a great ep. 
May 18 2007 17:39
Monogamy seems to work well for many (most?) people. For some of us it doesn't and polyamory is a better model. Ideally this is purely personal preference/negotiation and I agree with those who have said that it doesn't seem like the most pressing issue for these boards. And in context for me it is a large and immediate personal issue as I've had ongoing personal problems with trying to negotiate in terms of monogamy/polyamory.
I think the point at which it becomes political is when Power tries to foist one or other model be it heterosexuality, nuclear family, celibacy or monogamy on those within its reach.
I think that happens within this society. There is pressure, there has been coercion for people to fit into a heterosexual monogamous model. However I don't think that the ruling class sees this in any way as important anymore. With the legal pressures off (for a number of reasons including because of the militancy of GLF etc and as I said I don't think the ruling class saw it as important anymore compared to the disruption of those struggling against it.) there is increasing visibility and acceptability of non heterosexual/monogamous relationships.
However this society is conservative and slow to change. There is still social presure and reactionary views expressed regarding those of us who do not fit into the dominant mold :
revol68 wrote:
the relationships which are the most intense will always have the potential to leave people fucked up, bitter, angrry, depressed etc etc. It's the nature of romantic love and to be honest I wouldn't want to exchange it for some castrated leftist hippy wank fantasy where it's all very civilised, level headed and rational, where you do yoga whilst the stinking hippy in the next room fucks the person you love and then youse all sit down to some tofu together.
Personally I've always felt its a hang up for the empty lives most of us lead as workers/consumers that love is primarily quantified by how much pain and jealousy it induces. As somebody who very rarely feels jealous, and on the 2 occasions where I did feel it it was so obviously due to my own insecurities, I've found it hard to empathise with lovers who did express, or want me to express in that way, the power of their emotions via how awful i was when I/them wasn't around etc. Do we really doubt the authenticity of our hearts that much? What happened to ecstasy at being in someone's presense? Delight in intimacy? It seems that the culturally acceptable (ok, what I learned from watching soap operas is the social norm) way of expressing love is to look thunderously at any potential "rival" for your love.
Of course without pressure from the outside to conform (eg in revolutionary situations) to a certain way of being, other ways will spring up from those who naturally are inclined in that way. I don't think that makes "unconventional" relationships intrinsically revolutionary in themselves, although I do think monogamy as commonly practised by eg my parents is very destructive of any other relationships they might want to form. But nor are hose alternative forms of relationships purely "hippy wank fantasy". They are something that works for some people, and that the ruling class in this society proscribed for a long time.
Just because lots of things hippies do are pointless rubbish, doesn't mean they all are. Its reactionary to dismiss something purely on the basis that hippis do it so it must be wrong. Fine, decide its not right for you - you're probably right.
May 18 2007 19:34
look you don't have to justify putting it about to anyone so please don't dress your sex life up as being in anyway politically relevant.
I just hate the smug self satisfied wankerishness of hippies who expect people to be cold rational calculating machines about these things and beleive me I've known quite a few hippies who use such shit as an excuse for just straight out using people and then dumping all responsibility for the person feeling fuckedover onto them for not having transcended 'capitalist property relations'.
May 18 2007 19:40
Oh revol68, that is horrid. I quite fancy ginger as it happens, it was an excellent post. The personal problems one encounters when negotiating terms of monogamy/polyamory are the non-soap opera way of looking thunderously at any potential "rival" for your love.
May 18 2007 19:41
what's horrid???
May 18 2007 19:43
revol68 wrote:
what's horrid???
You defending the ruling class' hegemonic control of love.
May 18 2007 19:44
Asking someone to stop dressing up their sex life. Jesus, you're right though, I must fancy ginger even more than I thought.
May 18 2007 19:46
If I can't dress up for sex its not my revolution.
May 18 2007 19:48
Hi
Oh yeah. I don't see how ginger is trying to justify putting it about. I mean, being hot is justification enough.
Love
LR
May 18 2007 19:49
thugarchist wrote:
revol68 wrote:
what's horrid???You defending the ruling class' hegemonic control of love.
ahh bullshit if anything i'm a feudal opponent railing against the bare faced quick fix consumerism of capitalism and the commodity logic that reduces all interactions to empty hedonism and tears assunder bounds of loyalty and honour.
May 18 2007 19:51
"enhances all interactions..." you mean.
May 18 2007 19:52
revol68 wrote:
thugarchist wrote:
revol68 wrote:
what's horrid???You defending the ruling class' hegemonic control of love.
ahh bullshit if anything i'm a feudal opponent railing against the bare faced quick fix consumerism of capitalism and the commodity logic that reduces all interactions to empty hedonism and tears assunder bounds of loyalty and honour.
Yeah. I've done the lord of the manor/castle wench game. The hay lofts make me sneeze.
May 18 2007 19:55
Lazy Riser wrote:
HiOh yeah. I don't see how ginger is trying to justify putting it about. I mean, being hot is justification enough.
Love
LR
Well I dunno if she's adequately hot or not but I don't see the point in her trying to justify what she does with weakass appeals to sub Wilhelm Reich patronising of everyone who doesn't buy into free love bullshit as weak minded victims of capitalist conditioning.
May 18 2007 20:00
Oh aren't we moody. Are you enjoying your sex life comrade? As you say, there is no point, and that's why ginger avoided doing it. Is she a woman? This gets better and better. I hope she's watching me defend her so chivalrously.
May 18 2007 20:03
Lazy Riser wrote:
Oh aren't we moody. Are you enjoying your sex life comrade? As you say, there is no point, and that's why ginger avoided doing it. Is she a woman? This gets better and better.
except she said she wouldn't but then went on to do exactly that.....
Quote:
Personally I've always felt its a hang up for the empty lives most of us lead as workers/consumers that love is primarily quantified by how much pain and jealousy it induces. As somebody who very rarely feels jealous, and on the 2 occasions where I did feel it it was so obviously due to my own insecurities, I've found it hard to empathise with lovers who did express, or want me to express in that way, the power of their emotions via how awful i was when I/them wasn't around etc. Do we really doubt the authenticity of our hearts that much? What happened to ecstasy at being in someone's presense? Delight in intimacy? It seems that the culturally acceptable (ok, what I learned from watching soap operas is the social norm) way of expressing love is to look thunderously at any potential "rival" for your love.
like I said what Ginger does is up to her and i wouldn't sit down and offer cod psychanalysis about it.
May 18 2007 20:05
You must be drinking. I mean doesn't ginger strike you as the sort you'd go for? Does me. She better not be a minger, is all I can say.
May 18 2007 20:08
Lazy Riser wrote:
You must be drinking. I mean doesn't ginger strike you as the sort you'd go for? Does me. She better not be a minger, is all I can say.
eh what are you on about?
I don't know anything about her, mind you she's an anarchist so that hints at mental issues straight off the bat and that's bang up my alley.
May 18 2007 20:10
Hi
There you go. Her spell has got us both under control. That's 4 on the go she's got now. What a tart.
Love
LR
May 18 2007 20:13
Lazy Riser wrote:
HiThere you go. Her spell has got us both under control. That's 4 on the go she's got now. What a tart.
Love
LR
Lazy does your missus know about this double life you lead as a sauve post Nietzschian sexual hedonist on the internet? 
May 18 2007 20:15
Hi
Perhaps ginger is my Mrs.
Love
LR
May 18 2007 20:19
Lazy Riser wrote:
HiPerhaps ginger is my Mrs.
Love
LR
I reckon you'd be a jealous bastard in real life.
Can comment on articles and discussions
Now now be good. He wasn't even saying what he personally thought. And you're fellow AFers so you should be nicer.