I posted some of these thoughts when _refugee_ requested that I comment on the topic of cheating a couple of weeks ago.
There is much to fear when one engages in either open relationships or secret affairs. A big problem is that many people tend to fall "in love" in bed. Sex is a powerful vehicle for connection and communication.
Humans have so many needs -- emotional, psychological, physical, material, spiritual and needs we don't even know we have.
If there are any deficits in one's primary relationship, the deficits become magnified when one is feeling accepted, loved, and appreciated by someone other than one's spouse.
But the minefield of complicated relationships can be traversed successfully. While it's not for everyone, I increasingly meet people who amaze me in their navigational skills.
The difference is trust. If I trust you, I'm giving you privacy. If I don't trust you, you're conducting something in secrecy. If we trust our fellow citizens, we grant them privacy. If we distrust our fellow citizens, we question their secrecy. You are my friend. What you do in your bedroom is private. You are my enemy. What you do in your bedroom is secret. "Privacy" is a goal. "Secrecy" is a slander. The difference is that the first is something done between friends while the second is done between people who have no trust in each other. After all, a "secret exchange" is just someone else's "private correspondence."
But what of trust? I feel like "having trust" is so easily stated as the key to keeping a relationship healthy, and used as a blanket statement as the key to basically any other level of human relationship. If it were so simple to trust one another shouldn't we all trust each other? People distrust because their prior experiences incline them to be more skeptical in new relationships, or their partner is exhibiting signs that they aren't to be trusted-- trusting or distrusting falls on the particular individual in question, while being influenced by the other member and all prior relationships up to the current.. With all these wild factors and variants how is trust a stable key to anything at all? Trust is the most unstable thing I can think of! I'd be better off building my relationships on foundations of stale popcorn.
Edit: i don't know what I mean by stale popcorn. I was trying to think of something crumbly and unpredictable.
"Trust" is not an abstract thing noway. Trust is a long series of reliable behaviours: saying you are going to show up, and then showing up saying you are going to phone/write, and then doing it making a deal to share a particular responsibility and then doing your part saying you will keep a secret and then keeping it creating an environment in which each party feels like he or she is relaxed, competent, and confident instead of an environment where you feel judged Perhaps _refugee_ or insomniasexx or even the adorable eightbitsamurai or anyone else can add what "trust" means in terms of real world behaviours. Sometimes trust happens fairly quickly - the way someone listens and understands. When you meet that person, you think, "I feel understood, I feel this person cares about me and not just themselves." This feeling operates in business transactions as well as intimate connections. noway -- think of one person in your life whom you trust, if anyone. Then think of why you trust that person. Think of someone who trusts you. Are the underpinnings of those relationships built on stale popcorn or on repeated specific behaviours that give you a feeling of safety?
http://i.imgur.com/XKLnB8p.gif I think that's one of the keys, and is very relatable to some of the shit I've been dealing with lately. I think it's difficult to obtain that sort of relationship with someone, but I also think that's what makes working towards trustworthiness worth it. If you can trust someone enough that you know that they care about you as well as themselves, you've reached a point where you can open to that person without fear of repercussions. Noway, I think you're mixing up the fact that because trust is part of healthy relationship, it should be easy to do so. That's not the case at all. It's hard to trust someone, especially if someone has burned you because of that lack of trust before. But if relationships with anyone were easy, we probably wouldn't even be having this discussion, haha."I feel understood, I feel this person cares about me and not just themselves."
Yup. More than mixing it up, I think I was just hoping it does. I'm just wondering, if relationships are so hard, is there something easier? Friends with benefits or something like that can be just as stressful depending on the partner. Oh people, such strange creatures we are.Noway, I think you're mixing up the fact that because trust is part of healthy relationship, it should be easy to do so.
There is something easier, and that's being alone. That's the perspective I used to take. But, on the flip side of healthy relationships being hard but worth it, being alone is easy but shitty. Trust me, as the high-school kid that had too much cynicism and sarcasm and assholishness than anyone should or could handle. Your perspective will probably change when you find someone worth trusting, in the same way people who say "I don't need a boyfriend/girlfriend" - because of constant rejection/an inability to reach out and ask someone out - find someone worth being in a relationship with.
This must be my lousy writing but I do understand what you're saying and I wasn't trying to disagree or define trust otherwise. These are examples by which I understand trust, so I absolutely agree; I suppose I was really just expressing my own discomfort with building trust where it feels more like a forgery, or a synthesis, than a cooperative effort. Perhaps I was forcing it where it isn't meant to be, perhaps I'm not "doing it right" or something.. perhaps I'm not giving it enough time. Anyway I very much appreciate your explanation so thanks, just making clear that we're on the same page in understanding, not so much execution.saying you are going to show up, and then showing up
saying you are going to phone/write, and then doing it
making a deal to share a particular responsibility and then doing your part
saying you will keep a secret and then keeping it
I feel like you don't understand trust. There's a reason people who have some swear by it but people who don't question whether it exists. People distrust because they've been hurt and they're afraid of getting hurt again. The fundamental problem is that a relationship is nothing more than a protracted opportunity to get hurt. This is why courtship is so laden with subtext and hidden meaning: both parties are attempting to gauge each other's trustworthiness. Here's the shitty part, from your perspective: if you aren't willing to lay your heart open to be gutted by someone else, you will find yourself engaging other people similarly distrustful. That's fine if you're just ridesharing but if you want to build a life together, your "foundation" is every bit as "stale popcorn" as you suggest. "What of trust?" If you are with someone who shares your dreams, forgives your trespasses and protects your weaknesses, you are magnified. If you are with someone who doesn't, you're just sharing space. And if all you've ever done is share space, it's no wonder you don't understand trust.I feel like "having trust" is so easily stated as the key to keeping a relationship healthy, and used as a blanket statement as the key to basically any other level of human relationship.
Trust is the most unstable thing I can think of! I'd be better off building my relationships on foundations of stale popcorn.
I think I have experienced periods of genuine trust (albeit brief periods) in the few relationships ive had so far, but the majority as you suggest have been quite "space sharing" i suppose.. You're certainly right that making yourself completely vulnerable is a proactive way to earn trust, simply by showing trust to your partner. I'm just wondering how one does that, with all the subtext and hidden meaning that you mentioned (and I so dearly despise), it feels stupid to offer a direct and straightforward message like that to be speared instantly, taken advantage of.
Thing is, it takes a while to learn the ropes and nobody ever masters it. The only thing you can do is consciously enjoy every part of the process because it's unavoidable and leads to great things. It's totally a platitude, but it's also true: 'tis better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.
Agreed, I guess i need me a bit more of the ol' patience.
I cannot fathom a relationship without powerful trust. I suppose they must happen, but that would seem so very tiring to me. I have been burned, but that was that relationship. If that is a characteristic that I bring to this one, that's on me. Also, trust rewarded is empowering. It's a gift you can give. Is it really so unstable?
I'm not disagreeing that trust will make the relationship healthy and incomparably better than without, my problem is how easily it is said that trust is key, but how in reality gaining and keeping it in the relationship feels ridiculously hard, almost impossible. Shouldn't it be natural?
I believe that some relationships are more fertile ground for trust than others. At least that has been my experience. To a large extent that had to do with where I was at when I was entering the relationship. IMHO if you are not in a good place without a relationship, then you won't be in a better place within one.
I'm interested in what you're saying but I'm not quite sure what you mean. Could you explain? I figure, if I'm alone and lonely, not being alone would solve the problem granted my relationship is healthy.IMHO if you are not in a good place without a relationship, then you won't be in a better place within one.
I suppose if loneliness was the extent of your problems, then a relationship might be the fix. But, speaking for myself (with the advantage of hindsight), the healthiest relationship that I ever had (the one I have now) came at a time in my life when I was without a doubt content not to be in one. The short version is that at one low point, I resolved to work upon myself and to become the type of person that I might admire. It wasn't a straight path, and there were detours and setbacks, however after a few years, I had moved to a place that I think might have surprised my younger self. Once there, I found that what interested me about a relationship changed, and that it had less to do with fulfillment. My real interest was sharing life and what I was doing and I wasn't worried that the opportunity wouldn't arise. The The has a great pertinent lyric in their song Giant: I think you can swap 'know' for any number of words.How could anyone know me
When I don't even know myself?
I think you said it best This makes a lot of sense, thanks for the perspective. Also that song is so crazy, once I braced myself for like 10 seconds I was hooked for the whole ride.But, speaking for myself (with the advantage of hindsight), the healthiest relationship that I ever had (the one I have now) came at a time in my life when I was without a doubt content not to be in one
Pab, e.coli and syphilis are natural. Natural doesn't always mean good or worth it. Agriculture isn't natural, let alone our current standards of housing or clothing. We just don't have to put in as much work on those things, personally, because of industry...and that's not natural either. Couldn't you argue that the human being/human life in nature (or in our "natural" i.e., uncivilized environment) is probably innately, as Hobbes had it, "nasty, brutish and short"? You've read Lord of the Flies, no?
well that would mean that human relationships are unnatural as well! Unless we're so tainted by social construct that the original ingredients to a healthy relationship has been irreparably destroyed, so that we'd need unnatural things like trust to keep it all glued together.
When I first did that SotC post, I wanted to embed a link into a sentence Kleinbro-style, probably at the end or the beginning. The sentence would refer to something spiritual or knowledgable, and clicking the link, you'd think it would have something to do with said spirituality/knowledge. Instead it would have linked to a shitty .jpeg of a hubski logo riding a horse/dragon saying "you thought this'd be relevant, didn't you fucktard??" Ah, if time weren't ever an issue.
I'll throw out a loose proposition. Secrecy pertains to actions, intentions, even thoughts that directly concern others, whereas privacy is a more accurate term when there is little or no concern to others. A "secret" affair implies conspiracy. A "private" affair carries much less weight in its verbiage. This seems true of most affairs in general, not just emotional or sexual relationships. Oh, and as usual, I agree with the rest of your statements. :)
thx am_ I'm aware of that definition. I find the definition problematic because one partner might say this: It's a private affair that I do in my own time. It doesn't affect my feelings for you at all. It doesn't affect our relationship at all. Consequently there is no need for me to tell you, because it's private. The other person might feel differently. I suppose the margins of privacy would have to be negotiated. Someone just said to me that his partner likes to be alone more than he'd prefer; but they have different needs for sociability. His partner spends a lot of time on the computer playing games or reading (yes reading) soft porn. He says he accepts his partner's preferences and respects his partner's privacy. It's none of his business, he says. But when it comes to sexual partners, it is his business and they have established rules that they both follow (such as not in our shared house, for example).
Ahh, now I see where you were going with it, I don't think I was privy to the previous discussion. The other person might feel differently. Yeah, that can be one of those deep rifts that splits a good thing right up. Some people would benefit from having a mediator to raise introspective questions and to promote communication. Some people seem to be able to self-analyze and iron out the wrinkles themselves. You could probably make an argument that every moment of time in an intense relationship, there exists a different "feel" (to each person, even!) than any other moment of time for anyone else. Thanks, brains. We're all going to make some unique iterations of boundary lines. Case in point, lil's last paragraph. Would be interesting to see demographics on swingers, and other relationship/social practices. The reports of massive gay porn consumption in the middle east were awesome, after all.I'm aware of that definition. I find the definition problematic because one partner might say this: It's a private affair that I do in my own time. It doesn't affect my feelings for you at all. It doesn't affect our relationship at all. Consequently there is no need for me to tell you, because it's private.
Would be interesting to see demographics on swingers, and other relationship/social practices. The reports of massive gay porn consumption in the middle east were awesome, after all.
I am missing the connection between these two sentences. Perhaps the connection is best left to the imagination.
Oh sorry, I'm not trying to imply a tie between swinging and homosexuality, homophobia, or anything else. It's just always interesting to see social statistics, especially involving sexuality.