I've been reincarnated as a physicist's pet

[mzrowan]

Am I buying a house today? I don't know!

Am I pregnant? I don't know!

Is my head on the verge of exploding? You bet!

And so, I bring you a poll, blatantly stolen from aroraborealis:

Poll Elemental

Side note discovered when checking that Schrödinger was, in fact, a physicist: he was poly!

Comments

[dilletante]

seems like it'd be fodder for all sorts of jokes about uncertainty in who one was sleeping with.

but i tend to think of the poly model (if it's primary/secondary) as "good primary relationship, plus aboveboard secondary relationships," rather than "secondary relationships to escape a bad primary one, and nobody fooling themselves about what's happening."

[mzrowan]

I'd certainly be interested in learning more about it. I'm wondering if there's a presumption that his relationship with his wife must have been bad because they were seeking these outside relationships.

[coraline]

yes, exactly -- i always do wonder about the reporting bias in these cases, because it seems to take a LOT to overcome the automatic assumption of "if you're seeing someone other than your spouse, it must be because you're unhappy or no longer in love or no longer sleeping together."
damned cultural assumptions.

[lightcastle]

The implication from this biography is that it was a civil, and not happy marriage. This seems to come from his diary entries and hers. Their social circle was one where affairs and the like were expected and so politely taking other lovers was fine. He seems to have been of the belief that bourgeois marriage is incompatible with real love, and the point of a wife is housecleaning.

[corbet]

I was kinda torn whether to choose air or water for you.