Monogamy: Partner Ownership

This post is a follow up from my previous post on monogamy

     Once I had changed my mind about relationship jealousy, I still had a lot of distance to cover before I changed my mind about monogamy entirely. Plenty of monogamous couples are far more mature than I was and live without jealousy, and yet remain monogamous. While working through my jealousy/insecurity was a step along the path, it was just one part of the process of coming to polyamory. Another idea entrenching monogamy as the only acceptable relationship style was what I am referring to as "partner ownership."

   

      Jealousy isn't the only thing that was enforcing monogamy in my life. It is a cultural norm that a person should expect any person they are romantically involved with to forego such a relationship with any other person. Even as I over came my insecurity that my partner may find someone else they like more than me and leave me for them, I still felt like they owed me their entire being or like they somehow belonged to me. I may not have directly or openly claimed to be in charge of them in anyway, but I expected to have some direction over their choices. If they did something without consulting me then it could be considered somehow a betrayal or reason for losing trust.

     And it wasn't just about expecting to direct (or help direct, I like to think I wasn't THAT overbearing, but maybe they would disagree) their life, but also about expecting to control their time on a more hour by hour scale. My expectations here went something like, "if you are dating me, I can expect that you spend however much time I feel is appropriate on me." This may not have been manifest in such clear terms in my mind, but expressed in expecting them to do things that they didn't enjoy with me for the sake of proving that they loved me. I'm not saying that it isn't a nice thing to do to give up some of your time to engage your partner in their hobbies, but coming from the other side, expecting or telling them they have to indicates that you require it of them. I have seen this in relationships where one person wants to do something and another wants to sit back and relax. I have seen the person who wants to relax try to guilt the person who wants to engage in some activity into just lounging around, despite the obvious antsiness of their partner. Relationship jealousy is one manifestation of insecurity, but another is trying to control everything around you for fear if you don't that everything you have will crumble.

     This is a particularly bad reaction to insecurity in regards to the people around you. Tightening your grip simultaneously pushes people away and makes you mistrust any evidence of their love that may exist. I started to recognize this in myself when my response to being told by someone that they love was to question them. My mind instantly went to, "Do you though?" I would be really surprised if I was the only person to experience this, but for myself I recognized it came from a sense of entitlement to love from partners. My train of thought going something like, "Of course you are saying that, you owe it to me. Of course you are continuing this relationship, you married me and now have no choice in the matter."

     That lack of choice in the matter is what made me realize I had done a terrible disservice to my partners under the guise of love. I held my partners' affections hostage under threat of destruction of whatever life we had built together. Even if it wasn't in open threat, spoken out loud as a warning, it is common knowledge that break-ups are horrible things. The more entangled your lives have grown, the more ability your partner has to take away the things you have spent your time building, including your reputation and other relationships. How many stories are told in gossip in the end of a relationship, spreading the things that one partner has done to hurt another? These things have a way of damaging the familial relationships that develop over time with each partners parents and friends, and often ending them entirely. Even if I never said them, I knew that being in a relationship, and especially a monogamous relationship meant that a partner had invested so many of their resources in me that their support system outside of myself (both financially and in drifting away from family and friends) meant that to leave me was a large hassle, and a large risk to a partners mental health and financial stability.

     The difficulty of disentangling two lives is often seen as a comforting safety in a relationship, i.e. my partner wont leave me on a whim, but is a double edged sword that means that my partner may stay in a relationship with me long after they no longer want to, out of fear and shear difficulty. For myself, I came to realize that not only was this a contributor to my insecurity and a builder of belief that my partner is only with me because they have to be, but also a logical inconsistency between my professed love for them and my restricting them from pursuing whatever course may make them happy.

     I think that without this element of logic, I wouldn't have fully realized how my relationship style contributed to my own personal unhappiness. I have written here first about effects my world view had on my life practically, but the decision to make a change didn't come from those negative effects. I am an incredibly stubborn person, and will live my life in the way I have decided despite whatever pain it my bring me. I will lose friends, I will repeatedly walk myself into a wall, if I belief that is the right thing to do based on my perception of the world. I spent most of my life as a strong deontologist, and though I recognize the practical benefits of consequentialism, and find it more and more relevant, the tendency to create rules and follow them to my self destruction has been well trained into my psyche. Sometimes the rule is more consciously defined than others, but this one didn't need to be. It was built off the culture that exists around monogamy in the world I grew up in, and was naturally adopted by myself.

     Several things drew my attention to the my own logical inconsistencies around it. The first was a TED talk I came across. Titled, "Why Happy Couples Cheat," it described the way our culture has changed the way it views relationships and monogamy in modernity, and how the purpose of relationships have changed. It is a great talk, and worth listening to, but the parts that stuck out for me was a description of how cheating in relationships often has little to do with a intrinsic fault in the way that two people connect, and the motivations that people have for secret relationships can be entirely relatable. The common refrain of those wronged in the act of cheating cited in the talk "You think I didn't want more? But I am not the one who did it!" marked for me the fact that even in being wronged people are able understand why someone would want to pursue relationships outside of their exclusive relationship. If not universal, it seems that most people can think of at least one reason why they would want to. There are some good reasons listed in the TED talk and I recommend it if you have some time to give it a listen. There are legitimate reasons why people are drawn towards cheating, even though the act of betraying ones partner is entirely reprehensible.

   

     As an example, I have had several close acquaintances who have, after marrying and having children, left a religion that abhors homosexuality. Having left that environment and feeling able to listen to their own feelings, they realized an attraction to members of their own gender. Having repressed such feelings so deeply that they are only able to discover it later in their life, already married and in committed relationships, they are in a position that a certain part of themselves has become off limits to explore. This without any knowledge that this would be the position they would be in upon entering the relationship. This would never excuse them cheating, but could make them somewhat resentful for the position they have found themselves. They may never act on that, but still feel like they have missed out on a part of life or themselves, having never had the chance to pursue relationships with a large portion of the population that they had previously forbidden for themselves.

     For myself, realizing that there could be these sorts of things that my partner may be foregoing out of respect and love for me, or out of the difficulty it would cause them were they to pursue it, or however it may feel in their mind, made me feel sad. I wouldn't want the threat of emotion and financial ruin to be the only reason a person was with me, and more importantly I realized I could no longer feel comfortable feeling like I was owed that. I saw the inconsistency of telling someone I love them and then getting in the way of something that was a part of them, or something they thought might make them happy. If I love someone for who they are, not for the fact they are willing to give up a part of themselves for me to be able to accept them.

     It took me a lot of time to work through my jealousy issues around letting go of owning my partner and their affections. However, noticing that I had been given power and ownership over her by our past view of how a relationship should be, I had no choice but to release that grip over my partner at the time of this realization. I did not want that grip to be the only reason she was with me, for my own security and for her happiness. I wanted my love for her to be a commitment to her happiness, and not do anything to get in the way of that.

     What does that look like for me? I told her the realization I had come to. I told her that I did not want to block her happiness, I didn't want to repress her in any way. If she wants to pursue relationships with other people, including sexual ones, I am happy for her. If she doesn't want to be with me, I will do my best to facilitate that transition, rather than be a barrier to it. I do not want to own her, or for our relationship to be a shackle around her legs. And the results have been incredibly freeing for the both of us.

     For her, she is able to know that I support her in meeting her needs and wants in life in the best way that seems suitable for her. For me I am able to be free from the questioning of whether or not she wants to spend time with me, because I know if she did not want to do so, she wouldn't. It is beautiful the way that letting go of the chains of ownership on my partner has done more to free me than any other pursuit of freedom I have tried. This change in my world view has also allowed me to feel closer in all of my relationships romantic and otherwise, in a way that I was previously preventing myself from doing. It feels good when updating your beliefs, which may seem theoretical or not immediately practically applicable lead to positive changes in your life. This one definitely has, but that isn't necessarily the point of getting rid of inconsistencies in your life. The point is striving towards self honesty and true integrity. Knowing what you believe and how you got there. For myself that is the goal, independent of whether or not that makes life easier or more pleasant.

Relevant References:

Philosophize This! episode about deontology vs consequentialist ethics

morethantwo.com 

More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory 

Note: You can listen to More Than Two with a free trial of Audible here! And it helps support the blog!

The Bayesian Conspiracy episode about polyamory. Basically, this is 3 people talking about the different ways they practice polyamory/non-monogamy.

Unexplainable Occurrences

My Daughter, Florence, at the Ringing Rocks. This is a very unusual pile of rocks, which when struck ring in a metallic manner. The mechanism for which is currently unknown.

     One of the things I have changed my mind about that has had the biggest impact on my life is the way that I think about the unexplained strange things that happen in life. Some of these things might be more mundane, some cause people to structure their whole life around them. There are many such experiences in my life that I attributed to an all powerful being intervening on my behalf. There are many others that I ignored, or refused to admit even happened. The things I perceived as interventions from higher, intelligent powers, ranged from moments of inspiration in decision making, to unexplained healings and exorcisms. I could fill a page with just the things that I have sorted into this unexplained category from my life. I further sorted them into faith constructive and faith destructive miracles and then tried to minimize in my head the importance of the faith destructive while maximizing the importance of the faith constructive, but this is not the part I want to discuss today. This is about how my view of the whole category of supernatural phenomena.

     In my time as a religionist, I held the view that there were things that happened naturally, which were the realm of science, and things then that were unexplainable by science and thus supernatural. This sorting left a realm of mundane occurrences, explainable by mundane techniques, and a realm of mysterious occurrences that could not be explained by mundane techniques. Science could explain how a doctor could heal the sick, but when a faith healer did the healing it was beyond natural, and therefore out of the realm of what science could explain. These miracles or whatever term you like to use for anomalous events, then required some other system to reach explanations. They were, thereby, seen as support for religion in my life. Since science was unable to fathom their depths, religion and spirituality was required to tap into the world beyond. Here was a system that allowed for unusual occurrences. If the sun stopped rising and setting as science required it to, I could attribute the unusual phenomenon to the power of God and his willing the earth to cease its rotation. I was very grateful for the the freedom to kill my curiosity with this all encompassing explanation. This was a great system, I could avoid any questioning of my main religion which encompassed the realm of the unexplainable. The trouble came when I started examining my religion which ruled the realm of the explainable.

     After getting tired of my engineering major, I decided to give physics a try. This turned out to be an intimate examination of my understanding science. I started with essentially two curiosity stopping belief systems, which I used to prevent myself from ever having to be unsure. On the one had science was a black box mystery which provided answers about everyday sort of things, and on the other my religious system was a black box mystery that provided answers about unusual experiences. Since I had carefully protected the second system, throwing out any doubt that might try to assault it, and also spent a lot of time trying to understand it, it seemed like an appropriate time to get a better understanding of the first mystery answer box.

     Before spending time on understanding my "regular occurrence" religion, science felt like a list of answers to questions that other people had answered. It was merely a lookup table that could be checked to find answers to any question I might have about things that happen with some regular frequency. I have already written about how understanding the math and theory behind changed my mind about the age of the earth, but my education became a series of similar events. Slowly the magic fell away. It was a process that required many walks home from class with my head spinning as I wrapped my head around the implications. I felt like a child seeing the world for the first time. Having been warned, as I described before, against the power of science in creating apostasy I was prepared for a list of answers that might disagree with my other religion. Howsoever, what I was not prepared for, was the humility of science.

     When I started my education in physics, I saw no difference essentially between my two religions. I had spent years in deep study of my "religion of the unexplainable." When I searched for explanations from this answer box about the mysteries of these phenomena, I received answers. I received answer through both methods as mundane as reading and as mysterious as revelation. The answers were equally mysterious, and I wondered and worshiped at the mystery. When I searched from answers from my "religion of the explainable," it was a very similar experience. While I didn't realize I was treating these two things the same way, looking back it is pretty clear to me. The biggest shock of my examination of my "natural religion" was its admission of error. A magic answer box should never admit error if it is to be trusted! It took me a long long time and a lot of mental anguish to wrestle with this admission of guilt. Even worse than admitting error, it admitted uncertainty! This is an element of empirical research that had somehow been omitted in my understanding of science to this point in my life. I had held on to, and required certainty from both of my religions.

     Uncertainty is incredibly uncomfortable for me. I have become more comfortable with it over time, but I want there to be a well defined answer to any given question. I think this is a common view, and as a culture we have in our minds that if something is uncertain it is less valuable. My mistake was in assuming certainty was possible. In ignoring the super unlikely events that would make my whole world view nonsensical. An example from my religion of the explainable is the refutation of the Ptolemaic earth centered universe. All the regularly occurring phenomena were consistent with an earth centered view of the universe, and experiment regularly confirmed that sun and stars orbited the earth. This is of course a simplistic view of the history, but for a detailed consideration of this particular scenario I recommend Paul Feyerabends book, Against Method It took occurrences that were considered uncommon and perhaps even miraculous being incorporated into the theory to realize a shift was necessary.

     These unusual occurrences are often ignored for ease of communication, and this can make them appear nonexistent. For example, if you asked me how tall my office door is I would promptly get my tape measure to begin answering your question. I believe strongly in the old adage "measure twice, cut once" so I decide to make several measurements of the doorway. Say I measure it 10 times, writing down the measurement each time. I come up with a list of 10 numbers. The whole point of measuring 10 times is that I have assumed I may make some error, and I need further evidence in order to give you an answer. Say of my measurements, 9 of them are between 7 feet and 7 feet 1 inch but the one of them was 11 feet 6 inches. How do I answer your question? I collected data on the doorway, and it is not exactly straightforward. I have 9 answers that more or less agree, and 1 that does not. While there can be a number of ways to explain the 1 measurement, and why it might be ignored for the sake of our conversation about the doorway, the fact is that it still exists. I may tell you that the door is between 7 feet and 7 feet 1 inch, or I may tell you that 90% of the time it is so, while 10% of the time it appears to be much larger. I can chalk it up a mistake in writing down the measurement, or maybe I didnt notice I had 4 feet of tape laying on the floor. I could also assume that a supernatural occurrence where God, who is obviously at least 10 feet tall, needed to expand the doorway while he walked through, right at the time I measured. Whichever of these actions I take following the measurement change the real issue. Even if I through out the outlying measurement, the ones that more or less agree, still have a bit of uncertainty. The point of this example is that certainty is not something that is possible in considering phenomena, regularly occurring or unusual.

https://xkcd.com/1725/

     This realization, and the admittance in the answers given by the science, changed my mind about the requirement of another system, one to explain the unexplainable. The religion of the mundane was not running from these weird data points, but embraced them and used them to move forward. It did not want to hide them, but to put a big red flag on them so that they could be studied harder. This took it from the realm of a religion, to an honest endeavor to understand. This was the humility of science that I came to love. The honesty to say, this answer is uncertain, but when you try to check it out for yourself, this is how I got the answer I gave you. No matter how much I pushed into answers given by my religion of the unexplainable, it never became a technology. It never turned into a tool for creating new answers and verifying old ones, and once I found out that my religion of the explainable was doing everything in its power to not be a magic answer box I lost most of my interest in the unexplainable. My Scientism destroyed itself by the study of science giving tools for checking and verifying the answers given, while owning up to that which was unknown and uncertain. Meanwhile my religious answers remained as confusing and uncheckable, all while doubling down on the what I now view as absurd insistence on absolute certainty. Not only is that not an empowering tool for finding answers, its kind of boring. I lost my faith, not because I didn't believe its claims, but because I found that uncertainty is a part of the human understanding, and that science is far more messy than it might appear. If no one had told me beforehand that God sometimes walks through doorways, and he stretches them taller when he does, I would never have jumped to that conclusion on the one outlying data point. It may be true, but it seems a lot less likely than other more mundane explanations. I would be lying if I said that I believed it, and an extension of that simple example to various other phenomena such as faith healings or other miracles is the story of how I changed my mind about their importance.

     I found that removing both of my religions took away my ability to easily stop curiosity from forming in my mind. Curiosity is the great driver, which pushes inquiry forward both on a personal and societal scale, and I have removed two great obstacles to curiosity. I was grateful to them when I knew not of the drive curiosity can create, and the pleasure that can be derived from pursuing its leads. I loved the one for fear of damnation in an after life, and the other for fear of ridicule. However replacing the religion of science with the pursuit of curiosity in a scientific manner, I have avoided the damnation in mortality that I had clung on to so tightly for most of my life.

P.S. 

 Here is a bit of art relevant to today's subject. Song and video are both excellent. One of my favorites. 

An example of change

I have been surprised at how difficult it is to write posts as regularly as I would like for this blog. I haven't the dedication to write as often as I would like, but while I am working on my next essay about how changes I have made in my life, I wanted to share an example that really impressed me of someone changing their mind. This American Life recently aired an episode of their show titled "Fear and Loathing in Homer and Rockville." The episode covers two stories regarding a controversial issue, and the first one is all about the lengths a person went to in order to change their mind. It tells the story of a man who, unsure of what he should think about illegal immigrants, took it on himself to get to the bottom of the issue. It describes his process of searching for evidence and updating his beliefs on a complicated issue. The most impressive part for me is his humility through it all. At every point in the process, he attempts to question his own methods and really understand all sides of the issue. I aspire to follow his example, and I hope you find the story interesting. I would be really interested to hear any thoughts you might have on this story, the process of changing your mind for the better, or any feedback on my writing to this point. I am trying to improve my writing process and the quality of my output, so any advice is very welcome! Thanks in advance, and I hope you enjoy the story!

Follow this link to the story:
'Act One. Fear.' from This American Life episode 621: 'Fear and Loathing in Homer and Rockville.'

Rationalization of Poor Justification

Taken in the Bridger Mountains, near Fairy Lake

 

I had doubts long before I left religion. I think everyone does, and I think doubting is a healthy reminder to double check that we are heading down the right path. This idea of doubt is something I have changed my mind about. 

     

People who know me, if asked about my personality, would have to at least somewhere in that description include my huge tendency toward stubbornness. I am a person whose default belief is that I am right. When new information or evidence comes my way, my natural response is to give it WAY less weight than that which I have already processed. It is less of a confirmation bias than an anti-refutation bias and it is strong. Though this is my own personal weakness, it is a weakness that is embraced within the religious community which masked it from my own scrutiny for a long period of time.

     I am a pretty skeptical person, but this bias makes it difficult for me to change my mind. It is part of the reason I write this blog and why I have been so active in changing my mind. I have to be. If I do not make a conscious decision to examine something honestly, I will naturally dismiss any suggestion that I might be wrong out of hand. Because of this nearsightedness, I have missed a great many places where I have had weakness. 

     One of these places of nearsighted stubbornness was in religion. I told myself I believed, and from there it was a done deal. There was no amount of evidence that I couldn't question into non-existence. I used this bias as a tool to rationalize away the poor justification for my religious beliefs, in attempt to avoid feared cultural ostracization. In reality these had long since left the realm of beliefs and become self-enforced dogma. I refused to question these beliefs and spent large amounts of mental energy trying to avoid seeing any contradictions or error in them. This is a practice that is commonly encouraged within Christianity [1], including the sect of my youth [2]. It is simultaneously encouraged to give no weight to arguments which are counter to the beliefs laid out by the church while also accepting their claims without consideration of their rationality.

     However, I realized that this encouragement to rationalize was not intended to have blanket application. I felt it was right to put effort into making belief in religion rational, but then avoid making that same effort in any other situation. It was a self-generated "ends justify the means" situation, where I felt using an irrational tool was acceptable in the pursuit of this one thing I really wanted. It was OK to rationalize, but just in this case, just to avoid being an odd person in a community of believers.

     Eventually this imbalance became so heavy it grew uncomfortable. I began to realize that I was not being honest with myself in saying that I believed in things I did not actually believe in. This became clearly evident in regular meetings with clergy members when I was asked to affirm my belief. I realized I was not fully telling the truth in doing so, which contradicted other affirmations I was asked to make, including that I was honest. Here was a conflict:  Do I accept honesty as a value above cultural or religious acceptance? For years I did not. Not through any personal indication, but because it was a somewhat common experience within the community, I feared that honesty would mean an end to my marriage and severely hamper my relationship with my son. This was not a decision that could be made lightly, and I chose to eschew honesty for comfort. I know from conversations with friends that this is a decision that other people currently face. I would not fault someone for choosing either side, but it grew weary for me.

     A tipping point in my decision to stop rationalizing my acceptance (though for a long time it was less acceptance and more lack of open disagreement) with beliefs that were self-inconsistent and disagreed with more consistent evidence, was an idea I learned from Dave Ramsey. I found a piece of advice he gives on financial matters to be really freeing in ideas as well. Essentially, he repeats something to the effect of (speaking about some item that a person already owns),"Instead of thinking about selling [Some item], think about buying it. If you wouldn't buy it, you should sell it. Not selling it is the same thing as buying it again every day."

     When I considered my religious beliefs under this lens, the "anti-refutation" bias was no longer present. If I had all the evidence I do today, and no predetermined decision to pursue religion, would I choose to do so? In this light, it was much easier to see that my self-deception and "sell" these ideas. I did not need to continue believe the earth was 6000 years old, just because I had already decided to. Continuing to claim that belief in the face of strong evidence to the contrary was choosing to accept it anew, which it was clear to me I would not do. If I would not accept these claims coming to me fresh, why would I keep them around when I had many refutations of them? This new mindset was revolutionary to my life. I have applied this tool to change many things about my world view, and it has allowed me to be more true to myself, removing external pressure and focusing on weighing the evidence. It gave me the freedom to accept my lack of beliefs in the claims of religion and not pretend that I wanted them.

     I am still weak and prone to judging incorrectly, but I have gained the flexibility to make my own judgments and refrain from rationalizing belief in unjustified claims.

[1] Christ the Healer

[2] D. F Uchtdorf, Come Join With Us (2013)

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