Moving on
I’ve moved beyond the term “girlfriend”. While I’m not going to revoke Trish or Lindsay’s entitlement to the term, having bestowed it (the term “grandfathered”, silly in most other contexts, gets downright absurd here), I will not apply it to anyone else, regardless of whether they fit that mold.
Which leads me to the problem. What are the criteria by which someone qualifies as a “girlfriend”? (Or boyfriend, or significant other, or one Lindsay and I came up with, sig fig, or any other roughly synonymous term you might come up with.) It usually implies emotional attachment and exclusivity, though obviously the latter doesn’t apply in all cases, and particularly not in mine.
When you use the term in general these days, it also seems to automatically imply sex. With Sophie, we did various other things (which I’d consider to be sex, anyway), but when I dropped the “she’s still a virgin” bomb, people consistently did a double take.
Then there’s also that “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” are just juvenile terms, as evidenced by the inclusion of “boy” and “girl”. They sound so junior-high. And for as long as I can remember, my grandmother has referred to her “girlfriends”, without any connotation beyond what “friend” usually implies. So the term has long been losing its strict implications.
I specifically dislike the recent adoption of the term “partner” in this context. It’s the same problem as conscripting any other term into a new usage that’s related to its historical usage, but carries additional connotations, and in most instances doesn’t carry any additional qualifiers. It only exacerbates the existing problem, adding another option: when someone mentions their partner, it’s not clear whether they’re talking about their domestic partner, their business partner, their golf partner, or their dance partner. And context often isn’t enough.
So fuck it, I’m done with it. In my case, at least, it’s a term, and moreover a concept that’s outlived its usefulness. I’ve been gradually coming to this realization recently, but the bubble burst on me one day last week, in the car on the way home from the museum. In any case, to move beyond semantic bitching and toward something more constructive, I present the following:
I’ve got a range of levels of emotional investment/attachment to someone, ranging from passing acquaintance up to very bestest friend ever, and then I’ve got another axis on which to measure physical intimacy. I assume both of these are also true of everyone else, even if they don’t recognize it. They don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other, though I’ll admit that there is some linearity to it, even in my case. It’s a lot tougher for most people to plot these points, though, because they’re continually shifting, and most people only have a single intimate partner at a time - barring occasional one-night-stands, which will present their own cluster on the graph.
I’m much more emotionally attached to Lindsay than to Trish, but there’s a reason for that: Lindsay and I have been together for over two years, Trish and I less than six months. But, for various reasons, the scale of physical interaction is much higher with Trish than with Lindsay. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it’s just the dynamics of the respective relationships.
When I first met becka_kitty, the physical aspect went from zero to holy-shit pretty quickly. It wouldn’t have happened, though, had there not been some potential on the attachment axis, and that’s been gradually growing for over a year now.
My relationship with atheisticdryad has changed over the past year as well. Though we haven’t talked much recently, the general trend is that our position on the attachment axis continues to wax, while the physical contact has waned. Again, it’s just the dynamic of that relationship. While there was a time I referred to her as “my other girlfriend”, having thought about it, I’m not sure there’s really any reason for it, or at least not anymore. The best characterization of our relationship now is “friends who have fooled around in the past”.
True friendship necessarily implies love, so that end of the scale doesn’t necessarily need any additions. Lindsay's made the point that for her, the line between "friend" and "lover" is so faint that it's effectively absent, and that's about what my new picture shows as well. Romantic love is all well and good, but I’m largely past that too. Not entirely, and I’ll admit, I did get kinda twitterpated over someone for a bit this spring, but that never really got past mild infatuation, which falls on the spectrum between “acquaintance” and “true friend/love”.
For myself, I've got very few people who truly qualify as friends, despite having about 20 active accounts on my Friends list here, and I can't even tell you how many "friends" I've got on Facebook, Myspace, or Tribe. I've got more acquaintances than I know what to do with, and many of them I'll even refer to as "friends" in normal conversation, but they're not people that I really give a shit about. They're not people who would have a significant effect on me if I never saw or talked to them again. Those people, family included, I can probably count on two hands, though I might have to borrow a third hand.
For me, someone who truly qualifies as a friend is someone I intentionally hang out with, and who I can talk with about damn near anything. This doesn't include people that I just happen to associate with because we happen to belong to the same group, or participate in the same activity. Granted that's often how I've met friends, but that's not enough to make them friends.
It's late and I'm just rambling now, so I'm gonna quit and go to bed.
Which leads me to the problem. What are the criteria by which someone qualifies as a “girlfriend”? (Or boyfriend, or significant other, or one Lindsay and I came up with, sig fig, or any other roughly synonymous term you might come up with.) It usually implies emotional attachment and exclusivity, though obviously the latter doesn’t apply in all cases, and particularly not in mine.
When you use the term in general these days, it also seems to automatically imply sex. With Sophie, we did various other things (which I’d consider to be sex, anyway), but when I dropped the “she’s still a virgin” bomb, people consistently did a double take.
Then there’s also that “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” are just juvenile terms, as evidenced by the inclusion of “boy” and “girl”. They sound so junior-high. And for as long as I can remember, my grandmother has referred to her “girlfriends”, without any connotation beyond what “friend” usually implies. So the term has long been losing its strict implications.
I specifically dislike the recent adoption of the term “partner” in this context. It’s the same problem as conscripting any other term into a new usage that’s related to its historical usage, but carries additional connotations, and in most instances doesn’t carry any additional qualifiers. It only exacerbates the existing problem, adding another option: when someone mentions their partner, it’s not clear whether they’re talking about their domestic partner, their business partner, their golf partner, or their dance partner. And context often isn’t enough.
So fuck it, I’m done with it. In my case, at least, it’s a term, and moreover a concept that’s outlived its usefulness. I’ve been gradually coming to this realization recently, but the bubble burst on me one day last week, in the car on the way home from the museum. In any case, to move beyond semantic bitching and toward something more constructive, I present the following:
I’ve got a range of levels of emotional investment/attachment to someone, ranging from passing acquaintance up to very bestest friend ever, and then I’ve got another axis on which to measure physical intimacy. I assume both of these are also true of everyone else, even if they don’t recognize it. They don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other, though I’ll admit that there is some linearity to it, even in my case. It’s a lot tougher for most people to plot these points, though, because they’re continually shifting, and most people only have a single intimate partner at a time - barring occasional one-night-stands, which will present their own cluster on the graph.
I’m much more emotionally attached to Lindsay than to Trish, but there’s a reason for that: Lindsay and I have been together for over two years, Trish and I less than six months. But, for various reasons, the scale of physical interaction is much higher with Trish than with Lindsay. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it’s just the dynamics of the respective relationships.
When I first met becka_kitty, the physical aspect went from zero to holy-shit pretty quickly. It wouldn’t have happened, though, had there not been some potential on the attachment axis, and that’s been gradually growing for over a year now.
My relationship with atheisticdryad has changed over the past year as well. Though we haven’t talked much recently, the general trend is that our position on the attachment axis continues to wax, while the physical contact has waned. Again, it’s just the dynamic of that relationship. While there was a time I referred to her as “my other girlfriend”, having thought about it, I’m not sure there’s really any reason for it, or at least not anymore. The best characterization of our relationship now is “friends who have fooled around in the past”.
True friendship necessarily implies love, so that end of the scale doesn’t necessarily need any additions. Lindsay's made the point that for her, the line between "friend" and "lover" is so faint that it's effectively absent, and that's about what my new picture shows as well. Romantic love is all well and good, but I’m largely past that too. Not entirely, and I’ll admit, I did get kinda twitterpated over someone for a bit this spring, but that never really got past mild infatuation, which falls on the spectrum between “acquaintance” and “true friend/love”.
For myself, I've got very few people who truly qualify as friends, despite having about 20 active accounts on my Friends list here, and I can't even tell you how many "friends" I've got on Facebook, Myspace, or Tribe. I've got more acquaintances than I know what to do with, and many of them I'll even refer to as "friends" in normal conversation, but they're not people that I really give a shit about. They're not people who would have a significant effect on me if I never saw or talked to them again. Those people, family included, I can probably count on two hands, though I might have to borrow a third hand.
For me, someone who truly qualifies as a friend is someone I intentionally hang out with, and who I can talk with about damn near anything. This doesn't include people that I just happen to associate with because we happen to belong to the same group, or participate in the same activity. Granted that's often how I've met friends, but that's not enough to make them friends.
It's late and I'm just rambling now, so I'm gonna quit and go to bed.