This is the main index for all the pages added since I rebooted the site in 2025. There's several with dates older than that, but that's because those are mostly copies of posts I made in various Facebook groups that I'm copying onto my own site, or unfinished stories that I plan to work on again in the future.
Other indexes: archives index, tags index.
2020-01-15 06:52
In several past posts I've said attraction comes in two forms: passive, and active. Passive is "I think they are attractive in that aspect, but I don't really have any desire to connect with them in it." Active is "I am attracted to them in that aspect, and would connect with them in a heartbeat!"
2020-01-08 15:54
What makes a person? What underlying traits define our identities? Why do so many identities overlap with each other? How do we form relationships with other people? What are different frameworks with which to handle those relationships?
2020-01-07 09:35
2019-12-16 08:53
So many things I want to write about, but the FB Al-Gore-isms make it difficult to get all the posts seen if I split them up, so this is going to be a longer post instead. First off, a couple flash backs to previous posts.
2019-12-11 10:16
A conversation came up in one of the groups I'm a member of, asking how people define the difference between a friendship, and a partnership. As a relationship anarchist, I think that can be really tricky, and the lines between the two can get really blurry. To keep things super simple, I would say a friendship is someone with whom I have a positive bonding connection with. Be that social, platonic, romantic, sexual, any combination thereof, or something else entirely. A partnership is a friendship with mutual commitment to grow together in the aspects of connection we share. This is why as individuals we can have friends-with-benefits (a phrase I don't particularly like, but am using here for ease of reference), while at the same time having platonic partners. It's not about the "level of intimacy" (another phrase I'm not super comfortable with), but about the mutual commitment. The concepts are not mutually exclusive. And relationships are not static, they change. A friend may become a partner, a partner may become a friend. You can find you have relationships that don't fit into any pre-conceived categories. That's all okay! In the end, I don't think there are any set-in-stone definitions that everyone can agree upon, so just enjoy all of your interpersonal relationships for what they are: unique!
2019-12-11 09:18
So I'm taking a slight diversion away from the usual topics to talk about something I feel pretty strongly about. Bullying. In what seemed like serendipitous timing, literally a few minutes after finishing A.S. King's fantastic book "Everybody Sees the Ants" (a huge part of which is on the topic of bullying), I was browsing FB and came across a meme picture that was joking about bullying. The joke was pretty tame even if like certain other kinds of jokes, it's one of those things I don't personally find funny. The comment section on the other hand was a gong show. There were obviously some decent human beings who pointed out how horrible bullying is, and then there were the bullies and bully defenders who really do think that tormenting others is funny. I'm trying to run a somewhat objective page here, but from someone who experienced bullying first hand for a large portion of my school years, FUCK BULLIES AND FUCK ANYONE DEFENDING THAT BEHAVIOUR. Okay, I think I'm done. Just needed to get that off my chest. We'll be back to random thoughts on relationships and uplifting memes once I'm in a good headspace again. I'm not sharing the original joke, but here's a random selection of some of the comments...
2019-12-10 08:01
I shouldn't have to explain this, but some of the posts I've seen lately make it clear that it apparently hasn't been said enough: If everyone involved in a relationship is consenting, and >=AOC, it's nobody else's business. End of story. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
2019-11-27 12:28
Back in the spring, I started a series of posts on jealousy, and briefly touched on the difference between jealousy and envy. I kind of want to expand on that, because while jealousy is talked about a LOT in the various relationship communities, envy is far less discussed. I think that's a problem. So first off, jealousy has it's root in fear. Fear that your connection with someone will be loosened or broken by their connection with someone else. It's explicitly about connections you already have. Envy on the other hand I think is more rooted in self doubt and feelings of inadequacy. In a relationship context, it's when you see people with connections that you don't have, and really wish you did. The people you are envious of might be your own partner(s), or maybe friends, acquaintances, or even strangers that just remind you of "what you are missing". That's the real danger of envy, it so fills you with feelings of self-criticism that it can blind you to all the good in your life. I'll expand on this subject further in a later post. Right after I spend several hours/days reading similar posts written by people far more eloquent than I and wishing I had that writing ability...
2019-11-20 13:10
2019-11-17 13:22
So instead of talking about relationship structures (examples of those being strict monogamy, open relationships, swinging, or any of the many versions of polyamory) how about we take it a bit more meta and discuss relationship frameworks. What is a relationship framework you ask? Well, I think the best way to describe it would be to say it’s the way we internally view and describe all of our interpersonal relationships to ourselves (and how we try to explain said relationships to others, even if that’s a lot more difficult.)