more on sliding scales: defining intent up front
i took yesterday off, today it's back to the homework.
horsetraveller asked repeatedly, "My question is how could one say "it will definitely be a casual relationship" before even starting it."
very few people will ever make that statement up front, and even fewer people than that will accurately adhere to that intent once they immerse themselves in limerance or NRE or whatever it is that overwhelms people in the early stages of a new (sexually or emotionally) intimate relationship. why? because very few people will ever choose to voluntarily limit their options, even when maybe they should.
for myself, within my relationship with matthew, it is a necessity that i be able to shape my expectations, and matthew's expectations, as accurately as possible, in order to minimize potential negative surprises. when one of us is pursuing a new interest, the easiest way to manage the risky surprise factor is to make a statement of intent up front, and then adhere to it. it's like saying, "I'm going to drive into Toronto on Saturday morning; I have a limited amount of time, so I have to choose what I will and will not be able to fit into that resource, according to prioritization."
for us, as most of our friends will recognize, we have hugely full lives. therefore, our resources are highly defended and allotted to our various interests - human or otherwise - on the basis of prioritization. my relationship with matthew comes first. everything else falls out from that. in order to squish a new romantic interest into the resource pool, i have to shuffle my resources, especially my time, fairly carefully. i don't have a lot of bandwidth these days for managing another relationship that's as heavy on the conscious-active-homework level as is my relationship with matthew, so i start out with a statement of intent that is designed to fit what resources i *do* have available: i'm available for the kinds of relationships that aren't going to take a lot of time and effort, after the initial establishment of interest, availability, boundaries.
after making that statement of intent, i adhere to it by *choosing* actions that reinforce my intent: limited contact based on my own availability, conscious awareness and deliberate choice of action on any emotional responses i might have to my new interest. i may feel that crush as something powerful, but i don't have to choose to yield to it and throw myself repeatedly at my new interest in an effort to get as much of his or her focus as possible - that would be operating contrary to my statement of intent. horsetraveller commented at one point, "I don't know how you can define a relationship in advance as a casual relationship before you have gone through all the fun of newbrightshiny and NRE and falling in love", and my answer is, sometimes "falling in love" just doesn't happen. it certainly doesn't have to happen, and it's surprisingly easy to avoid if you choose to do so. i have had the NewBrightShiny distraction become a long-term casual relationship without ever succumbing to the "falling in love" syndrome; my lovers are still people i care about and am interested in, enjoy spending time with and make a certain amount of time for, but for whom i never had that "falling in love" feeling. i chose not to engage in the behaviours that might have led to that feeling.
and no, it wasn't always easy to either make those decisions, nor to adhere to them. don't think matthew and i haven't spent a lot of time carefully examining some of my actions, measuring them against my stated intents, and calling me on my decisions where discrepancies appeared.
enjoying NewBrightShiny NRE has nothing to do with defining intentions and sticking to them. from experience, you *can* work that enjoyment of the limerance state into the statement of intent without ever overstepping the defined boundaries of a casual relationship - it all boils down to conscious choices in your own actions, assuming you're willing to define boundaries and be the primary arbiter of adhering to them (or have someone you love and trust help you adhere to them without triggering your own autonomy issues, which is a constant challenge for me, personally). for example, i could tell matthew, "that head of long dark hair i've been pining for? he's interested in me, too, so we're going to meet for dinner and talk about what we're going to do. i intend to keep this casual, meaning i won't fit more than one sex and/or social date every couple of weeks onto my current calendar, and maybe be able to email/IM him every other day or so, if that. i'm a little giddy about this, and if the giddy distraction level becomes a problem for you, let me know so i can keep you in the loop about what's going on in my head, or moderate my distraction activity as needed."
statement of intent, defined before anything gets started. explicit expectations of some degree of NRE distraction, explicit expectation of both sexual and social date time. also an explicit invitation to the primary partner to remain directly involved in the process with me as i'm going through it. having thus defined what i intend to do, i can then make deliberate choices that enable me to stay on the prescribed course i've chosen: i can choose NOT to spend more time in contact with NewBrightShiny than i've alloted myself. i can choose NOT to wedge more sex or social time with NewBrightShiny onto the calendar. i can choose NOT to act on any over-the-top, heat-of-the-moment emotional responses that tend to trigger on the heels of great sex (how many of you have first uttered the words, "I love you" on the heels of fantastic sex, or some equally intensely emotional interaction? uh-huh... i thought as much.)
by making those deliberate, conscious choices, i remain true to my stated intention of keeping a relationship casual, even while i've enjoying the ebb and flow of limerance or NRE or whatever you want to call it. i'm not trying to finagle a trip to the Metro Zoo onto my limited timetable of that trip to toronto, because i would then be choosing to act outside my stated intent; i would have to take away resources from something else in order to accommodate it, when it represents an unexpected (surprising) change to my stated plans. i can enjoy the idea of going to the Zoo, i can plan to make that trip at another point.
and therein lies something that perhaps wasn't clear in previous examinations. intentions, even between matthew and i, are not carved in stone for eternity. just because i choose to identify a relationship up front as "casual", doesn't mean it always HAS to be that way, forever and ever, amen. what it does mean, however, is that when things *do* change over time, when i become aware that my intentions are shifting, i have the responsibility to communicate that change to matthew, preferably not in a heat-of-the-moment situation where my actions are already committed to that shift, before i've cleared things with my primary. we have a guideline in our house: "If i'm thinking it, you're hearing it", that applies to our understandings of corollary relationships as much as anything else. if i become aware of a shift in my thoughts or feelings about a lover - up or down the scale of emotional engagement - then it's my job to communicate that shift as needed (to the lover as well as to matthew, just to be clear).
most people won't willingly short themselves of an opportunity to enjoy the happiness and positive feedback of NRE; they invest a lot of emotional vulnerability when they take a crush out of the realm of a one-sided experience into an interactive developing relationship, and why would they short-circuit feedback to their self-esteem by imposing any kind of emotional limitation on what they will or will not do? this self-restrictive policy is going to be a foreign - nay, downright alien - concept to most people. as redsash, my favourite proponent of active language puts it, "labels are limiting". but in this case, that's entirely the point, at least for me; a label such as "casual", when placed on a developing non-primary relationship, becomes a tool than enables me to shape my expectations, matthew's expectations, and my new lover's expectations. without accurately shaping all of that for all parties involved, i am uncomfortable taking the risks of proceeding into an emotionally-landmined territory where a lot of people are bringing different needs and expectations to the fore. if i start with a label that at least matthew and i understand, it gives us a starting point in our lexicon from which to evaluate risk on the basis of those explicitly-defined expectations, which in turn makes it easier to communicate outward to a new lover, all of those inner workings.
will this work for everyone? shite, no. as numerous people have commented elsewhere in the last couple of days, most people choose not to do this much work, because they'd rather surf the newness and see what shakes out in the end, and go from there, rather than start out with limitations (self-imposed or otherwise). matthew and i, at least at this point in our relationship, canNOT work like that. *i* cannot work like that; too many weasels just waiting for any inexplicit loophole to bound through to freedom, and many of you have seen the carnage that results from letting the weasels drive. so our workaround is to make the explicit statements of intent up front - accounting for the tidal pull of NRE can certainly be a part of that statement of intent, as shown above - and then measure behaviours against the explicit intentions as a means of managing risk. it all boils down to choice, and conscious decisions that support that choice. i *choose* the actions that will keep a new relationship on a casual heading, until such time as i consciously choose to change things (either to increase the intimacy of the relationship, or to end it).
this is the whole point of congruency. people who don't want to be held accountable, won't make those statements of intent. people who don't care about accountability, won't adhere to them even if they do make them.
in the end, it's all about choice, and showing (by action) or defining (explicitly) what we as individuals value in our choices. i don't expect my values to be anyone else's, which may explain why horsetraveller and others are having a hard time understanding *why* anyone would voluntarily apply limitations before even getting out of the starting gate.
horsetraveller asked repeatedly, "My question is how could one say "it will definitely be a casual relationship" before even starting it."
very few people will ever make that statement up front, and even fewer people than that will accurately adhere to that intent once they immerse themselves in limerance or NRE or whatever it is that overwhelms people in the early stages of a new (sexually or emotionally) intimate relationship. why? because very few people will ever choose to voluntarily limit their options, even when maybe they should.
for myself, within my relationship with matthew, it is a necessity that i be able to shape my expectations, and matthew's expectations, as accurately as possible, in order to minimize potential negative surprises. when one of us is pursuing a new interest, the easiest way to manage the risky surprise factor is to make a statement of intent up front, and then adhere to it. it's like saying, "I'm going to drive into Toronto on Saturday morning; I have a limited amount of time, so I have to choose what I will and will not be able to fit into that resource, according to prioritization."
for us, as most of our friends will recognize, we have hugely full lives. therefore, our resources are highly defended and allotted to our various interests - human or otherwise - on the basis of prioritization. my relationship with matthew comes first. everything else falls out from that. in order to squish a new romantic interest into the resource pool, i have to shuffle my resources, especially my time, fairly carefully. i don't have a lot of bandwidth these days for managing another relationship that's as heavy on the conscious-active-homework level as is my relationship with matthew, so i start out with a statement of intent that is designed to fit what resources i *do* have available: i'm available for the kinds of relationships that aren't going to take a lot of time and effort, after the initial establishment of interest, availability, boundaries.
after making that statement of intent, i adhere to it by *choosing* actions that reinforce my intent: limited contact based on my own availability, conscious awareness and deliberate choice of action on any emotional responses i might have to my new interest. i may feel that crush as something powerful, but i don't have to choose to yield to it and throw myself repeatedly at my new interest in an effort to get as much of his or her focus as possible - that would be operating contrary to my statement of intent. horsetraveller commented at one point, "I don't know how you can define a relationship in advance as a casual relationship before you have gone through all the fun of newbrightshiny and NRE and falling in love", and my answer is, sometimes "falling in love" just doesn't happen. it certainly doesn't have to happen, and it's surprisingly easy to avoid if you choose to do so. i have had the NewBrightShiny distraction become a long-term casual relationship without ever succumbing to the "falling in love" syndrome; my lovers are still people i care about and am interested in, enjoy spending time with and make a certain amount of time for, but for whom i never had that "falling in love" feeling. i chose not to engage in the behaviours that might have led to that feeling.
and no, it wasn't always easy to either make those decisions, nor to adhere to them. don't think matthew and i haven't spent a lot of time carefully examining some of my actions, measuring them against my stated intents, and calling me on my decisions where discrepancies appeared.
enjoying NewBrightShiny NRE has nothing to do with defining intentions and sticking to them. from experience, you *can* work that enjoyment of the limerance state into the statement of intent without ever overstepping the defined boundaries of a casual relationship - it all boils down to conscious choices in your own actions, assuming you're willing to define boundaries and be the primary arbiter of adhering to them (or have someone you love and trust help you adhere to them without triggering your own autonomy issues, which is a constant challenge for me, personally). for example, i could tell matthew, "that head of long dark hair i've been pining for? he's interested in me, too, so we're going to meet for dinner and talk about what we're going to do. i intend to keep this casual, meaning i won't fit more than one sex and/or social date every couple of weeks onto my current calendar, and maybe be able to email/IM him every other day or so, if that. i'm a little giddy about this, and if the giddy distraction level becomes a problem for you, let me know so i can keep you in the loop about what's going on in my head, or moderate my distraction activity as needed."
statement of intent, defined before anything gets started. explicit expectations of some degree of NRE distraction, explicit expectation of both sexual and social date time. also an explicit invitation to the primary partner to remain directly involved in the process with me as i'm going through it. having thus defined what i intend to do, i can then make deliberate choices that enable me to stay on the prescribed course i've chosen: i can choose NOT to spend more time in contact with NewBrightShiny than i've alloted myself. i can choose NOT to wedge more sex or social time with NewBrightShiny onto the calendar. i can choose NOT to act on any over-the-top, heat-of-the-moment emotional responses that tend to trigger on the heels of great sex (how many of you have first uttered the words, "I love you" on the heels of fantastic sex, or some equally intensely emotional interaction? uh-huh... i thought as much.)
by making those deliberate, conscious choices, i remain true to my stated intention of keeping a relationship casual, even while i've enjoying the ebb and flow of limerance or NRE or whatever you want to call it. i'm not trying to finagle a trip to the Metro Zoo onto my limited timetable of that trip to toronto, because i would then be choosing to act outside my stated intent; i would have to take away resources from something else in order to accommodate it, when it represents an unexpected (surprising) change to my stated plans. i can enjoy the idea of going to the Zoo, i can plan to make that trip at another point.
and therein lies something that perhaps wasn't clear in previous examinations. intentions, even between matthew and i, are not carved in stone for eternity. just because i choose to identify a relationship up front as "casual", doesn't mean it always HAS to be that way, forever and ever, amen. what it does mean, however, is that when things *do* change over time, when i become aware that my intentions are shifting, i have the responsibility to communicate that change to matthew, preferably not in a heat-of-the-moment situation where my actions are already committed to that shift, before i've cleared things with my primary. we have a guideline in our house: "If i'm thinking it, you're hearing it", that applies to our understandings of corollary relationships as much as anything else. if i become aware of a shift in my thoughts or feelings about a lover - up or down the scale of emotional engagement - then it's my job to communicate that shift as needed (to the lover as well as to matthew, just to be clear).
most people won't willingly short themselves of an opportunity to enjoy the happiness and positive feedback of NRE; they invest a lot of emotional vulnerability when they take a crush out of the realm of a one-sided experience into an interactive developing relationship, and why would they short-circuit feedback to their self-esteem by imposing any kind of emotional limitation on what they will or will not do? this self-restrictive policy is going to be a foreign - nay, downright alien - concept to most people. as redsash, my favourite proponent of active language puts it, "labels are limiting". but in this case, that's entirely the point, at least for me; a label such as "casual", when placed on a developing non-primary relationship, becomes a tool than enables me to shape my expectations, matthew's expectations, and my new lover's expectations. without accurately shaping all of that for all parties involved, i am uncomfortable taking the risks of proceeding into an emotionally-landmined territory where a lot of people are bringing different needs and expectations to the fore. if i start with a label that at least matthew and i understand, it gives us a starting point in our lexicon from which to evaluate risk on the basis of those explicitly-defined expectations, which in turn makes it easier to communicate outward to a new lover, all of those inner workings.
will this work for everyone? shite, no. as numerous people have commented elsewhere in the last couple of days, most people choose not to do this much work, because they'd rather surf the newness and see what shakes out in the end, and go from there, rather than start out with limitations (self-imposed or otherwise). matthew and i, at least at this point in our relationship, canNOT work like that. *i* cannot work like that; too many weasels just waiting for any inexplicit loophole to bound through to freedom, and many of you have seen the carnage that results from letting the weasels drive. so our workaround is to make the explicit statements of intent up front - accounting for the tidal pull of NRE can certainly be a part of that statement of intent, as shown above - and then measure behaviours against the explicit intentions as a means of managing risk. it all boils down to choice, and conscious decisions that support that choice. i *choose* the actions that will keep a new relationship on a casual heading, until such time as i consciously choose to change things (either to increase the intimacy of the relationship, or to end it).
this is the whole point of congruency. people who don't want to be held accountable, won't make those statements of intent. people who don't care about accountability, won't adhere to them even if they do make them.
in the end, it's all about choice, and showing (by action) or defining (explicitly) what we as individuals value in our choices. i don't expect my values to be anyone else's, which may explain why horsetraveller and others are having a hard time understanding *why* anyone would voluntarily apply limitations before even getting out of the starting gate.