The Prisoner's Dilemma and poly relationships

[much_ado]

pyrategrrl pointed me at an excellent post that introduced me to the concept of the Prisoner's Dilemma, and how it works in the context of poly relationships.
[edit: i have lived through PD situations, likely mangled more than a few of them; i just didn't know it had a name in or out of the poly context prior to reading the post. i'm not quite *that* waifish

Comments

[much_ado]

something i said in a reply to a comment in tacit's post is applicable here as well:

the vulnerability often comes along with a degree of emotional investment in the initial offering: "i am opening myself up to you, and giving you a chance to rebuff me, which i may choose to perceive as a hurtful interaction".

if you don't emotionally invest in the offering, then there is no vulnerability - as you say, you shrug it off and move on, no damage done. a lot of people, in my experience, invest *heavily* in any act of reaching out, and take it as a mind-bogglingly-large range of hurt or insult when rebuffed.

so the question of whether or not you're invulnerable actually becomes more a question of "how much emotional investment do you include in any outreach you make?"

in your case (because i actually know you), i think your initial outreach is genuine and *does* contain some degree of emotional investment; you're just better at not responding to rebuff or rejection than many, up to a point.

in my experience, not everyone responds to openness with openness; but like you say, if rebuff happens, we learn, and we adjust, and we continue. i'm all good with reaching out, but i never make the automatic assumption that anyone to whom i reach out will "be likewise warm towards me". but i'm hardly surprised that we differ there, we being two different people after all ;-)

[persephoneplace]

interesting differences, my friend. That is also a good analysis of my outreach.

I think part of this, funny as it is, even to me, is the remnants of being a farm girl that I carry. When i grew up, you waved to anyone driving past the house b.c there were so few - you just assumed that you knew them or would or should know them. It has had a huge impact on how I act toward people i don't know.

I do always feel slightly confused when i get a cool reaction tho - like i just don;t know what to do with it or why they might be like that.

I do also wonder sometimes how my experiences of being adopted affect my approach to poly. I always had a story that included the mom raising me and the mom who birthed me and was encouraged to have room in my heart for both, even when i didn't know the latter.

[mzrowan]

(to make the following sentences clearer: A is lovers with B is lovers with C)

I think there's another level of emotional charge here, too, in poly situations, that comes from knowing that C could dislike or be uncomfortable enough with you that they try and interfere with your relationship with B, either explicitly ("I'm not happy about you seeing A") or implicitly (suddenly having an emotional breakdown the night A and B are supposed to have a date). And if C is more established with B than A is, A is even more afraid of what C could do.

(Of course, whether that interference will work has a lot to do with B, but many people are vulnerable to that type of thing, or have explicit "veto" agreements.)

I guess my pointis that that adds to the emotional investment that you might have in C liking you, making it more than the normal "I'd like you to be my friend, but it's no big deal if that doesn't happen".