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Yeah, I'm not saying it's impossible. But I think it's a lot harder to learn to love yourself if you're always depending on external validation. I have long qu

by xracy 3y ago

Yeah, I'm not saying it's impossible. But I think it's a lot harder to learn to love yourself if you're always depending on external validation. I have long questioned the "deeply meaningful friendships very quickly" thing. A while back I set up a model of relationships that's something like a probability cloud. When you first meet someone they have whatever your standard probability cloud is of actions they might take. The only way someone can really hurt you is by acting outside of that probability cloud. As you get to know someone the list of actions that you expect in their probability cloud changes pretty dramatically. I have a 'friend' who isn't a close friend, but I was friends with both him and his partner. He cheated on his partner (probably, I don't know for sure, but it's sorta moot, and I believe that he did). And I remained friends with both of them, in spite of feeling like this was a really shitty thing for him to do, because at the end of the day it wasn't really outside of what I expected for him. He didn't wrong me, because he consistently acted in the way I expected him to. That said, I also don't have a deep friendship with him, because at a certain point I realized that it wasn't the kind of friendship I would want with him.

thomastjeffery 3y ago
My relationship with my self is just fine without external validation. It's in my relationship with everyone else where that comes into play. Your friend broke a commitment to your other friend. In doing so, they proved a level of disrespect to commitment itself, and that damaged their friendship with you. But what if they didn't make the commitment in the first place? What if they knew that they wouldn't be any good at monogamy, and said so upfront? Could they have avoided this entire situation, and upholded a respect for commitment; all without changing their behavior? Our society has an implicit expectation that romantic relationships be based on commitment. That's not the only thing a relationship can be built on: your relationship with your friend was based on respect. I want to build my own romantic relationships on respect instead of commitment. Is that really such a batshit insane idea? If not, I could really use some external validation.
- xracy 3y ago
  No, I think that's pretty reasonable framework for any relationship. TBC, I'm still friends with the person, probably because I never respected them for their commitment to others in a romantic relationship in the first place. I also don't have any strong feelings to uphold monogamy, so I definitely need to have an expectation that someone cares about monogamy before that's something I will judge them against. While I think this person definitely subscribed to the cultural norm around monogamy, nothing about their personality told me they were invested in it. Looking at it through your framework of respect, I didn't feel like they lost my respect for cheating on their romantic partner, because I didn't really respect them enough in the first place to think they wouldn't. :D It definitely wouldn't be how I would approach respect for a romantic relationship, but I also would just never be in a romantic relationship with the kind of person that I hold in such low regards.

by xracy 3y ago

thomastjeffery 3y ago

My relationship with my self is just fine without external validation. It's in my relationship with everyone else where that comes into play. Your friend broke a commitment to your other friend. In doing so, they proved a level of disrespect to commitment itself, and that damaged their friendship with you. But what if they didn't make the commitment in the first place? What if they knew that they wouldn't be any good at monogamy, and said so upfront? Could they have avoided this entire situation, and upholded a respect for commitment; all without changing their behavior? Our society has an implicit expectation that romantic relationships be based on commitment. That's not the only thing a relationship can be built on: your relationship with your friend was based on respect. I want to build my own romantic relationships on respect instead of commitment. Is that really such a batshit insane idea? If not, I could really use some external validation.

xracy 3y ago
No, I think that's pretty reasonable framework for any relationship. TBC, I'm still friends with the person, probably because I never respected them for their commitment to others in a romantic relationship in the first place. I also don't have any strong feelings to uphold monogamy, so I definitely need to have an expectation that someone cares about monogamy before that's something I will judge them against. While I think this person definitely subscribed to the cultural norm around monogamy, nothing about their personality told me they were invested in it. Looking at it through your framework of respect, I didn't feel like they lost my respect for cheating on their romantic partner, because I didn't really respect them enough in the first place to think they wouldn't. :D It definitely wouldn't be how I would approach respect for a romantic relationship, but I also would just never be in a romantic relationship with the kind of person that I hold in such low regards.