fear & failure in nonmonogamy

Ravenscroft

Banned
(Apologies for the lack of structure; I couldn't figure out how to break it up, & had to settle for linearity. Feel free to address specific comments, though keeping it germaine to the overall heap would be helpful. :))

In another thread, I offered up a quote that'd been bugging me --
Men are afraid that women will laugh at them.

Women are afraid that men will kill them.
For the moment, I'm going to set aside the tendency to "solve" problem with physical violence. Instead, I want to offer some thoughts on fear & failure.

The first line of that quote, that men are afraid of women laughing at them, doesn't go far enough. A portion of the problem lies with so many people living in abject fear of error: guessing wrong, failing to achieve perfection, negotiating, compromising, failing. Male, female, cis, trans, gay, straight, whatever -- it's pretty universal.

The Romantic "one in a million" meeting with one's Perfect Soul Mate -- who coincidentally happens to live three doors down or work in the next cubicle :rolleyes: -- hints at something darker: that people are often so desperate to connect that they can attach to just about anyone (propinquity), creating a backstory rationalization & twisting their previous standards crazily to fit & then often overlooking problems that were previously courtship "deal-breakers" & will likely eventually become grounds for separation.

When the NRE wears off & the truck hits the wall, it's clearly because "he wasn't who I thought he was" MEANING "he was lying to me all this time" when it was usually ME lying to ME. And because each of us wants to reserve our right to claiming Victim status, we rush to the aid of every wailing Victim & tell them what a big meany their Soul Mate was all along, even if minutes before we'd been giving them a peptalk on how to squash down & ignore their "jealousy" & to go find a "pro-poly" headshrinker.

In short: better to cling to a disaster (possibly including violence & risk of death) than say to the world, "wow, that sucked, oops."

(And, again to preserve general validity of Victimhood, some will even attack those who forthrightly accept error. :eek:)

And this goes all the way back to even the "risk" of regularly dating multiple people, particularly when single. We see it all the time on this site: someone shows up & asks why their relationship is ghastly, & lays out how they "decided to try poly"... snagged the first not-too-repulsive candidate who drifted past... then dumped all their pent-up gunnysacked expectations on that person expecting them to step up muy damn pronto to being Life Partner.

At risk of redundancy :) -- a Realtor told me that people really ought to view at least 14 properties before a final decision. He specifically meant people who'd never before bought a house, or maybe last did so many years back. His idea is that real-world hands-on exposure was necessary before a buyer even knew how to ask the right questions, & how to phrase what they wanted, what they needed, what would be really cool to have, what was totally unimportant, what they would be able to afford to fix. (I learned a lot by happily helping friends house-hunt whenever possible, & even then have probably done only 40 tours.)

Few make it past #4. And that seems to be a hedgerow (if not a wall) in nonmonogamy as well.

I realize I am blinkered by my own prejudices & experience. Specifically, I have NEVER wanted a closed relationship, especially a "lifetime" -- would any sane person sign a fifty-year phone contract?? :mad: It seems that the vast majority of nonmons & inexperienced hopefuls want an open two, or a closed three/four, or to be a vee hinge, so don't see why there'd be need to go much past "one & done," where I'm the sort who really does enjoy hanging out with cool new people, getting to know him/her/them, developing a feel for whether/how we could fit our lives together to the benefit of everyone -- in short, an entirely open-ended form.

For me, most women are attractive, AND few women are attractive. That might seem illogical, but each clause is a separate circumstance. If I were to randomly wind up in conversation with someone, & I liked how her mind worked, & the sound of her voice, & how she expressed herself, it's possible I'd find myself increasingly interested in physical contact -- so, likely "most women." Then again, there's been a very small handful of women who have caught AND held my attention from the very first passing encounter.

At a science fiction convention, the third time I ever chatted with Julee (a tall gorgeous & somewhat fierce redhead), I stepped up behind her & started gently kissing her shoulders. We grinned at each other, then I wandered to the buffet. A friend asked me whether I was insane; I said, "she could've belted me, or pulled a gun, or called the cops, & I would've deserved it, but I knew it was the right thing to do." (Actually, the second time we'd ever met was an hour earlier, at a friendly tattoo competition, & we'd flirted back & forth for a bit, so I already knew I wasn't unwelcome.)

Still, I wasn't afraid of getting publicly shot down, turned away, maybe even humiliated, preferring outright directness rather than relying on last-call tipsy tete-a-tetes in dim corners. And I detest suspense: I'm willing to walk across a crowded room, ask a woman for attention, introduce myself, then wander off. People might be surprised at how often this resulted in a date. A few times, I eventually wound up involved with one of the observing friends, who was initially charmed by my straightforwardness

Another caveat: I tend to be attracted to women whose body language says they have Attitude. And good physical condition is another positive: martial artists, gymnasts, semi-pro dancers, cycling/running enthusiasts, track-&-field.

My friend Matt had all sorts of parties at his house. He once asked me, baffled, how it is that I'd show up with one gorgeous woman after another (as recounted elsewhere, I am NOT particularly studly). I shrugged & said, "I'm not afraid."

Yet in our culture, many people ARE deathly afraid of "doing it wrong," a major result being that they never give themselves opportunity to learn how to do it RIGHT. And by "it" I mean pretty much anything, but particularly in TABOO areas like sex & intimacy & emotion & all that baggage.

Imagine something that you enjoy doing -- some hobby or a cooking technique or a simple around-the-house repair. Now, imagine how far you'd have got with THAT if you required yourself to cease forever after making a mistake, as in ONE... & by "mistake" I mean "less than 100% perfect."

I've been fortunate enough to have had a few DOZEN sexually intimate relationships, which generally developed from AND returned to being close friendships. Most people have happily brainwashed themselves to believe that all those relationships were failures, & such arcs have occasionally been called such in these forums.

I've sat & cried with a partner when we realized we'd hit a wall, & both would benefit from parting ways. I cannot call this degree of honesty & trust "failure."

An inspirational quotation --
Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
To put it another way: generally, we learn how to do cool stuff by breaking sh!t. :eek: It's not that we WANT to break cool stuff... but that's the price of learning.

Maybe it'd help to put "failure" on a scale, rather than all-or-nothing.

Investment guru Robert Kiyosaki said a major stumbling block for new entrepreneurs & investors is that they get locked into one project, ignore the big picture, & obsess with "making it WORK." He said his experience & observation was that individuals needed to prepare to start ten businesses. They would turn out to be something like the following:
  • 4-6 -- failures, with various sizes of smoking crater :(
  • 3-5 -- rather good, really, but unremarkable
  • 1 -- huge success, ramping quickly up to millions in sales
But he regular emphasizes that his own "failures" taught him MANY valuable lessons, whether getting important advice from trusted advisors or properly interpreting a P/L statement.

He also repeats: you are PROBABLY going to have AT LEAST ONE failure before you land a Big One... so get started!! Resolve yourself to taking SANE risk, & missing Perfection: correct your skill set, learn all the way, try again.

As well, learn how to recognize that an investment doesn't really deserve your undivided attention. If it's rocketing toward the ground, then salvage what can be salvaged, & move along; if it's an "eh" relationship, then be grateful for the experience, don't drag it out until it turns into agony for everyone involved, & instead maybe pass it along to someone who's better suited for the necessary work -- certainly DO NOT rely on God or Hope or the Universe to pull off a miracle just because that's what YOU expect.

You've probably heard that "chance favors the prepared mind."

This is preparation.
 
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A last few thoughts for the morning.

Speaking as a smalltime gambler, profit comes from risk AND from not being stupid: these are (or at least ought be) inseparable. I've won from both persistence AND casual random pocket-change play -- a major difference being that winning $1,000 after burning through $650 is MUCH more "exciting" than winning $1,000 on less than $10... but, really, I'd rather have the latter :D because it's faster AND not so hard on the heart. ;) (I hate suspense...)

It does worry me to see good & otherwise sane people piss away capital (monetary, social, emotional, temporal) chasing long odds. And too often, when they dig deep but get VERY lucky & hit a decent payout, I've had to walk away rather than watch them dive back in, lose their recouped winnings & yet more, rather than settle for breaking even, walk away clean, & dabble again tomorrow.

Relationally, I have said AND been told something like "I really like you, but it's not a good fit right now, & I hope we can maybe consider it in the future." But I have no doubt, there are some people who will read that & be horrified, truly chilled, at the coldness of reducing Romance to such a logical transaction. Some of my hottest sexual relationships happened YEARS after the initial flirtation of mutual interest, & both of us being in a better life place probably helped.

IMNSHO, Romance fits okay with monogamy because there's plenty of myths & cute bandaids to paper over the failure. Romance can work as well with some forms of nonmonogamy, particularly where everyone can avoid comparing notes & making observations. But allowing Romantic notions to override sensibility interferes implicitly with polyamory.
 
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