So I just went through this whole thread and a few other in the forum that have to do with relationship anarchy. The reasons for this are varied, first and foremost, after reading the introducing posts, it helped me make sense of a mode of approaching relationships that at some points became prevalent in my last relationship, in which the proposal to open up was eventually discussed in the process of a break-up, and the way my ex seemed to approach it sometimes had similarities to RA. On the other hand, the more I read, the more it made sense to me, which was odd and unexpected. Finally, because I have been interested in anarchy as a political theory and practice, amongst other left-wing ways to approach the world, and because I have often wondered about the political dimension of relationship building, it made sense to go through it all.
I guess that I post this in hopes of re-kindling the discussion, and that this will help bring to the table points which I probably thought about as I was reading this and which I have forgotten.
Interestingly enough, I kinda followed a dialectic process whereby I would oscillate between the proponents and critics of RA throughout the thread.
I largely agree that relationships should be defined by those who are in them and that assuming foreign relationship structures carries the risk repressing people's desires, wishes, hopes, and potentially causing a lot of discomfort.
However, there are a bunch of issues that give reason to pause and doubt, and I wish to list them here and hope that people might dialogue with me on them:
- On the negative regarding establishing hierarchies of value between different relationships on the basis of them being labeled friendships/romances/partnerships I would immediately reply that it is inevitable for us to hold some relationships as more valuable to us in terms of how intimate they are, and this has to do with the fact that the more intimate a relationship is, the more time, energy, emotional and affective resources you spend on them. Also, intimate relationships tend to be the biggest contributors to our well-being, and as such, in so far as we value our well being we tend to ascribe more value to people who contribute more to our well-being. I see no reason to get bent out of shape because some people are more important than others, and I believe that recognizing and honoring those differences is key to having healthy relationships with ourselves and them!
- On the negative notion of rules and authority: Talking to a friend a couple of weeks ago, on the subject of procedures and agreements internal to a political collective, he said that it was not because of these explicit, formal agreements that an organization was truly democratic but in virtue of them that it was not authoritarian. Let's see if I can convey this adequately: If things are decided spontaneously, it is more likely that they are decided without the full consent of those involved, because they either lack the information or the chance to make a decision. It is in those cases that the relationship truly becomes arbitrary or authoritative. So I think that the fact that anarchists, be they of the relationship or political variant, by eschewing structure, organization and procedural rules (I know this is not always the case) can end up fomenting authoritative practices, and that this rests on an equivocation regarding the political nature of relationships, be they "personal" or "political" (which is a false dichotomy, IMO)
- I see a really fundamental problem with relationship anarchy in so far as it seems really naive in terms of its anthropology. By this I mean how it understand the workings of human beings. Bear with me, I'm not about to say that it is immature, or something to that effect. I guess what I see is that, coming from a background in philosophical training, we are historical beings, whose ways of making sense of the world, of navigating it, of structuring as something that makes sense, cannot be found only in us, but in the social structures, in our language, in the ideological discourses that constitute us as people and as subjects. We are also not transparent to ourselves, by which I mean that, in lieu of psychoanalysis, there are entire realms, of desire, of affection, of meaning, that are inaccesible to us, or they are accessible only in really restricted and distorted ways.
So while we may think that we are eschewing structure, hierarchy, implicit or explicit expectations, power dynamics, the truth is that in all likelyhood we will reproduce all those things. At the same time, the reasons for why we act as we do, the choices we make, we don't make them as free individuals, entirely transparent to ourselves. Sure, this happens in every relationship, and any mode of relationship, but the problem with RA, as far as I see it, is that it seems more likely, on the basis of its ideological principles, to be reflective regarding those issues.
Also, and finally, and in the interest of transparency, I just had a really bad experience trying to explore non-monogamy for the first time and my partner invoking discursively elements which I associate with RA as a way to be shitty, to avoid having conversations that needed being having regarding how things were going down, and as a way of not owning up to previous agreements, explicit and implicit, that we had. Of course, I broke up with her, so I guess that is something in favor of the Asshole interpretation iterated in this thread haha.
Edit: Also I feel that either you have to acknowledge that you do differentiate relationships on a categorical basis, rather than on a case by case, or you acknowledge that expectations are legitimate. Because it seems to me that in many other relationships where there are loving bonds it would be generally recognized that expectations are in order. In the case of a parent/child relationship, the child would be correct in expecting the parent to deliver a basic quality of living, at least. Or if you are living with a partner, you would be correct in expecting that person to behave in such a way that they will not run out on their financial obligations, or the care for the household. It seems reasonable to me to affirm that we have expectations from people, and that these are neither illegitimate nor unfounded, and that they are not detrimental. I am not too sure why RA has such a negative view regarding expectations.