tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post6457224697286997701..comments2024-03-12T22:31:46.500-04:00Comments on What Would Phoebe Do?: Your Savage coverage continues UPDATEDPhoebe Maltz Bovyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-34602522432643605262011-07-17T13:22:00.380-04:002011-07-17T13:22:00.380-04:00(Oh, and agreed - you, I, Oppenheimer, agreed re: ...(Oh, and agreed - you, I, Oppenheimer, agreed re: GGG).Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-3788906901493850012011-07-17T13:21:15.487-04:002011-07-17T13:21:15.487-04:00PG,
"I guess I don't agree that so long ...PG,<br /><br />"I guess I don't agree that so long as there isn't sex, there won't be an emotional entanglement."<br /><br />I don't believe I argued that. Of course that's possible, but drawing a line avoids a good deal. And not just in some sense of, people think they can separate sex and emotion, then their emotions prove uncontrollable. Just - it's simpler for I suspect most people to just think of there being a line, and that anyone who's off-limits sexually is also off-limits in terms of close emotional connection.<br /><br />"One obvious way to be certain that no pregnancy can result is to avoid procreative sex."<br /><br />OK, this is where I'm going to disagree most strongly. It's so, so much easier to trust that one's husband, for example, is going to avoid sleeping with others, than to trust that, in a moment of passion, certain acts are rationally kept off the table. <br />I especially think unplanned/not-wanted-by-all-parties births would be more common among the 35-and-up set - people not in the mode of OMG-I-can't-get-pregnant contraception (as many 20-somethings still are, as a holdover from high school/college), when people might imagine their partners won't have STDs (regardless of realities), and when - and I don't think this can be dismissed! - an unplanned pregnancy might look (not to resort to SATC, ugh, but think Miranda) like, hey, this could be the last chance of having a kid. All of this needs to be taken into account, since that's the age group where "opening up" a marriage that had started monogamous would come up.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-9164588368658722362011-07-17T12:56:07.612-04:002011-07-17T12:56:07.612-04:00Oops, I misunderstood your closing sentence in the...Oops, I misunderstood your closing sentence in the prior comment -- I didn't realize you meant that the children of the existing relationship would be negatively impacted by the creation of their half-siblings; I'd thought you were saying they'd be negatively impacted just by their parents' having a sexually open relationship.<br /><br /><i>what keeps emotional entanglements low is to fully (or close to) eliminate the possibility of sex</i><br /><br />I guess I don't agree that so long as there isn't sex, there won't be an emotional entanglement. This is why people get stressed by their spouses becoming very close to someone of the opposite sex even if sex is very unlikely. IMO & experience, the way to minimize emotional entanglement is to minimize all forms of interaction with the person (even including the epistolary -- people did fall in love by letter). People who feel a crush coming on should choke it early -- which might entail keeping the crush object frozen as an ideal -- rather than feed it with interactions.<br /><br /><i>as Oppenheimer points out, what if one spouse is that way, and the other just agrees to it?</i><br /><br />Sure, but as I indicated in my comment on your earlier post about the article, I agree with Oppenheimer that this is a problem with GGG. This is not like sitting through "Clash of the Titans" because your spouse loves it and you're keeping him company; the decision about whether a relationship will be sexually exclusive shouldn't be made with one party's unenthusiastic passive acceptance.<br /><br />Also, the likelihood of a child's being born out of a one-night stand when even one of the parties takes a serious, responsible stance on contraception (as well as avoidance of disease), seems very small. One obvious way to be certain that no pregnancy can result is to avoid procreative sex. As with a recent Savage letter-writer, vaginal intercourse might be that "thing we do only in our marriage" while everything else on the menu is available for one-night stands.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-8464027744058831692011-07-16T11:47:28.926-04:002011-07-16T11:47:28.926-04:00PG,
"People aren't the helpless victims ...PG,<br /><br />"People aren't the helpless victims of their emotions"<br /><br />Helpless, no, but what I was getting at in my last comment was that what keeps emotional entanglements low is to fully (or close to) eliminate the possibility of sex. You don't see how opening up that possibility changes things? Someone married but with a crush on a co-worker (80% of Dear Prudence's letter-writers) is less likely to get terribly emotionally involved if it stays just a crush. Crush plus sex doesn't necessarily equal emotional entanglement, but it sure ups the odds.<br /><br />"I just don't think it's plausible that if you're someone who is sufficiently capable of dissociating sex from emotion that you'd agree to a non-sexually-exclusive marriage, that you'd then feel so strongly about someone after a single one-night-stand that it would be necessary to keep seeing that person until you were engaged in functional polygamy."<br /><br />First off, as Oppenheimer points out, what if one spouse is that way, and the other just agrees to it? Next, the issue isn't an emotion-driven slide into polygamy, but rather the possibility that a child will be born out of a relationship outside the marriage, but not one anyone has any intention of hushing-up, either. <br /><br />"How so?" <br /><br />Because even though he wasn't super into the mom, and it was just a sex thing, dad's now super excited, now that it's born, to have a new child, he'd always wanted a son, anyway, and is going to pay the kid's college tuition, spend weekends with him, etc. Because, look, meet your new half-siblings whose very existence reminds you of your parents' unconventional sex lives.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-51977965875734969432011-07-16T11:39:04.731-04:002011-07-16T11:39:04.731-04:00While Savage says that what you thought might be a...While Savage says that what you thought might be a one-night stand can develop into your lifelong relationship complete with adopted kids, I don't think he's ever claimed that if your one-night stand occurs against the background of already being in a serious relationship (like marriage), you can't keep it a one-night stand. People aren't the helpless victims of their emotions; if they were, marriage would be an impossible project anyway because most marriages run up against times when the parties hurt each other and think they'd be better off away from the other person. I just don't think it's plausible that if you're someone who is sufficiently capable of dissociating sex from emotion that you'd agree to a non-sexually-exclusive marriage, that you'd then feel so strongly about someone after a single one-night-stand that it would be necessary to keep seeing that person until you were engaged in functional polygamy. A one-night stand CAN lead to marriage -- but only if you let it.<br /><br /><i>Less so - but still to some extent - the children of the "primary" couples.</i><br /><br />How so?PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-36401074915416762092011-07-12T04:14:30.863-04:002011-07-12T04:14:30.863-04:00PG,
"If we pretend that Savage's relatio...PG,<br /><br />"If we pretend that Savage's relationship were with a woman, it still wouldn't allow for his partner to have formed such an emotional attachment to another person that she'd be wanting to have his baby."<br /><br />This is too idealized to cover reality. 1) People sometimes form stronger attachments than they set out to. The barrier of knowing sex can't happen tends to be what allows those to fade if fade they must, so if the relationship's supposed to be just about sex, that barrier's gone. Something that starts out as negotiated non-monogamy can, if feelings change, <i>feel</i> like polygamy to some or all involved. 2) Even if the "other woman" isn't all that infatuated, even if everyone's following the rules perfectly, she could well be 38, accidentally find herself pregnant, and, figuring this might be her last such opportunity, decide to keep the fetus. There's then a baby born into a very complicated situation.<br /><br />"If I'm in a mediocre relationship and see a guy and think, "Hey, he's new and cute, I want to touch," that's not the same as being in a mediocre relationship and wanting to start a relationship with someone else."<br /><br />I don't think Savage would agree with you here - he's always saying that you never know which relationships will be one-night-stands, which will be marriages, because the former can lead to the latter. And he's right. <br /><br />"Aside from STDs and a level of carelessness among heteros that would lead to unintentional fatherhoods, what Savage was talking about really shouldn't be affecting children much."<br /><br />And it's precisely the children of those "unintentional fatherhoods" that MSI and I believe would be negatively impacted. Less so - but still to some extent - the children of the "primary" couples.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-73111154635746509872011-07-11T20:30:58.145-04:002011-07-11T20:30:58.145-04:00I hadn't read the NYT piece about Savage's...I hadn't read the NYT piece about Savage's ideas as focusing on polygamy so much as on a monogamy that allows for sexual infidelity. That is, neither Savage's relationship, nor that of most bourgeois gay men nowadays, actually allows for the partners to have serious romantic commitments to other people. It just allows them to have sex with other people. If we pretend that Savage's relationship were with a woman, it still wouldn't allow for his partner to have formed such an emotional attachment to another person that she'd be wanting to have his baby. <br /><br />There's such a huge difference between marriage without sexual fidelity versus actual polyamory/ polygamy that the two really ought not be conflated. For one thing, the political commitments are very different; Savage spends vastly more energy on altering the federal definition of marriage so that it can be one man and one man, than he does on altering it so it can be one man and two women. <br /><br />If I'm in a mediocre relationship and see a guy and think, "Hey, he's new and cute, I want to touch," that's not the same as being in a mediocre relationship and wanting to start a relationship with someone else. Aside from STDs and a level of carelessness among heteros that would lead to unintentional fatherhoods, what Savage was talking about really shouldn't be affecting children much. I doubt Mom and Dad's excursions to the swingers clubs impacted Jack and Jeri Ryan's kids -- until Mrs. Ryan got fed up and divorced him over it, which wouldn't have happened if they'd negotiated pre-kids about what their sex life could entail.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com