It's been about a year since I've posted how my life was going. I figure I can do it again without boring people too much.

I still work at the same place I did a year ago, although it was a new job then. I'm rakeofdoom's boss. The company went through a really harsh time over the holidays, shrank from about 110 people worldwide to around 60 -- lots of people left, lots didn't get their contracts renewed, and ten or so got laid off -- and got sold. My job is still secure, I think, although out of the five IT people we had, only rakeofdoom and I are still there, still with me in charge of things. It's been stressful. Very. Stressful. Especially this past week, for some reason.

Hmm. Relationships. ariata and I broke up in August, by mutual decision, on very good terms. We're still great friends. I think it was the most mutual parting of ways I've ever experienced, or even heard of. I dated anna_mcann for a month and a half in there (monogamously, for a change), I think September-October, but it went pretty badly. I've been single since then. It took me a while to get used to it, after dating ariata for three years, but I kinda like it now. I have a theory that I learn the most about myself and relationships in the periods between them, and this is no exception. I still can't put things into words, exactly, but I know I think differently about relationships now than I did when ariata and I started dating back in 2004.

I'm actually in that masters program I decided to apply for, the night/weekend M.S. in Information Management at the UW, otherwise known as the Exec MSIM program. I'm in the middle of my second quarter. It's been...boring. Initially, I figured I'd have to wade through a bunch of "intro" classes the first year, and get to the interesting stuff the year after, but it's actually been so slow that I've considered dropping out. Lucky for me, I randomly ran into a second-year student at a cafe I frequent, who suggested I talk with the assistant dean about it. The assistant dean happens to be the professor of one of my classes, so I did, and now it looks like I'll be able to skip the classes I already know cold (like the databases intro class...) and replace them with more interesting electives. I think that's awesome, and will really help me enjoy school. The details of this are still up in the air, though.

For a while, I became something of an outgoing introvert. I guess that's a contradiction of terms, but I mean that I didn't go out often, but when I went out I was really outgoing and met lots of people. I just didn't follow up with any of them. Between work and school, I've been really busy, and just hanging out with a few close friends whenever I've had spare time. I still go out dancing every weekend, and I've started to just "hang out" with people again, which is nice. Not having as much schoolwork this quarter helps, I think.

I've lost another 25 pounds, bringing me down to 240. I plan to lose another 20, and then stop at 220. I seem to drop ten pounds, then stay there for a couple months, then drop ten more. I've been fluctuating from 238-242 for about 4 months or so, now, although it just started to drop again. Still have no special diet to speak of; I just eat what I'm hungry for, and stop eating when I'm no longer hungry (as opposed to sated). I've noticed that I tend to eat more when I'm really stressed, which has been problematic recently.

Actually, stress has been a really big deal lately. Both ariata and anna_mcann, the two people I've frequently slept next to recently, have told me that I occasionally stop breathing in the middle of the night, then start again. I've heard of sleep apnea, but as I felt like I got enough sleep, I didn't think much of it. Now, I'm waking up 3-5 times in a night, and gasp in a breath as a realize I hadn't been breathing. Luckily, suffocating wakes me up. Unluckily, there's something wrong with my breathing hardware. That's kinda scary. It's much, much worse when there's something stressful at school, at work, or socially. It doesn't seem to matter how tired I am. Stress management or no, I think this requires a doctor.

I recently started studying chess again. I do that every couple years -- just start playing a lot, looking up theories, memorizing openings that suit my fancy. I've never been a tournament player, though I apparently play well enough to be one. One of these days I'm gonna play enough to get rated, but I haven't bothered yet. I just sit at Trabant with the chess board in front of me, doing work or homework or just dallying around, and play whoever wants a game. I might even find a tutor again. In six months or so, I'll probably stop playing again. It's what usually happens. I kind of do these things in waves. Next, it will probably be learning haskell (specifically, to wrap my head around monads), which has been on my "to learn before I die" list for a while. I just really like learning; if I'm not learning something, I feel like I'm slowly dying. Although, if I'm bored for long enough (this takes about three days), it actually gets kind of nice. Those three days are torture, though.

That's about the state of my world.

Comic courtesy of I Drew This, a political commentary webcomic.

For all that I'm about the whole "sex doesn't equal love" thing, I'd never actually had "just sex" before last night. I'd always wanted some sort of relationship from it. The past two nights, though, I've brought someone home, handcuffed her, fucked her senseless till we both had a hard time standing, and then taken her home. And wow, that was some of the best sex I've ever had. I now understand why the bdsm afficionados enjoy themselves so much, and I'm only touching the tip of that iceberg.

I think I've been way too reluctant to push someone, sexually, if I'm actually interested in a long-term relationship with them. Even if they want me to. Even if they've asked me to. It's terrible, but I think I'm much less interesting in bed with people that I pursue relationships with. I've had the whole "respect the woman" thing drilled into my head to the point of absurdity, so if I sense any sort of resistance -- and sometimes it's only in my own head -- I'm likely to never bring it up again. And yes, just sit frustrated, and possibly look around for getting it elsewhere, irked at my partner for my own issues. I'm stupid that way, sometimes.

I've had sex with a few of my previous girlfriends after breaking up with them, and it was always much more interesting an experience after the relationship ended. When I wasn't scared of hurting them emotionally (because I thought them less likely to be hurt, not because I no longer cared), I was able to get past my hangups, and just play around instead of being so serious. It's like I was 18 again -- I learned more about sex in those few rolls than in the dozens (hundreds?) of times I've had sex inside the limits of a Relationship. It seems that if the explicit purpose of the meeting is for carnal pleasure alone, I don't have any weird hangups, and have tremendous fun. So does she, apparently.

Oh yeah, in case anyone missed the memo: I'm single now. For a couple weeks at this point. Trisha and I parted ways on good terms, we're still friends, and still enjoy each others' company. We just both think that being a couple was a bad idea for the both of us, so we stopped. After three years, and with little to no drama. I'm actually a bit surprised, human nature being what it is, but hell -- I'm not complaining. Things were slightly awkward for the first few days, as she basically moved out of my house, but even that seems to have passed already. I hold very few regrets regarding that relationship, and still hold her and her opinions with much respect.

I don't understand the reasoning behind limiting yourself to one sexual partner. I mean, it's just another physical act, like going on a rollercoaster, or kissing, or dancing. It just seems rather arbitrary to me.

I can understand why it would have been a good idea as little as 50 years ago for safety reasons, but with proper use condoms plus spermicide -- which are amazingly cheap -- you literally have a higher chance of dying in a car accident than getting pregnant¹, yet we think nothing of driving cars or crossing the street.

STD's are now an issue, of course, but if you're concerned about that you can both get tested first and exchange test results, obviating the issue on a case-by-case basis. (If you know they have an STD and you sleep with them anyway, well, that's kinda like jumping out of a plane. No one pushed you, and it's your own damn fault if you didn't check your safety gear carefully enough.)

I kind of understand the "in order to fit in" argument. I don't particularly feel a desire to fit in, though. Never really have. I've found that standing out has generally done me better.

Still, an amazingly large number of people think that limiting yourself to one sexual partner² is a great idea. More than that, an amazingly large number of people think it's the only viable option.

Why is that? Is it just a religious preference?

EDIT: I'd really like to get the opinions from people who have been polyamorous in the past, and are now monogamous. I know some of you are out there. Please?


¹: I ran the numbers. Feel free to do it yourself. I used the USDOT fatality numbers for 2004 (which are lower than 2003 and 2002, and the latest I could find) and the effectiveness ratings published by Planned Parenthood for proper use of condoms and spermicide. Depo alone is even more effective.
²: At a time, at least. The whole "single boyfriend/girlfriend" thing, and only sleeping with them. Nothing says you can't find another significant other, but that typically ends the current partnership, and all that.

In my last entry, I mentioned a few things about exclusivity and commitment. This sparked some conversations in the comments that brought a few other interesting things to the forefront of my mind, and they're actually a bit more organized now.

There are at least two types of commitment. There's the "de facto" situational commitment, which comes from the environment you're in, and then there's the internal commitment, which is a decision to see something to its end.

As an example of situational commitment, consider going to college. If you are halfway through college, and you've taken out loans to pay for the first two years, you will be screwed if you drop out, have loans to pay, and can't command a salary high enough because you have no degree. You are situationally commited to continuing, because there's an immediate cost to leaving. If, at that point, you no longer care about your schooling, it's still in your best interest to keep slugging along. You may eventually hate it so much that you leave anyway, but it's less likely. That's a type of commitment.

As an example of internal commitment, consider going to college. If you are halfway through college, but all of your college career is paid for by grants, if you drop out, you're fine. If you stick it out, you'll be sinking more of your time into the gamble of coming out ahead in the end, but there's no "penalty" for ditching besides discontinuing to learn. If you stick that out, that's an example of internal commitment. There's no "cost" of leaving -- actually, there's a cost to stay, and you're hoping that cost will be worth it when you get to the other side. That's a different type of commitment.

Imagine what happens to the first student if someone comes and somehow makes all his school loans go away. Huge inheritance, rich uncle, whatever. If he doesn't care about his schooling anymore, that student will drop out of school in a heartbeat. There's no internal commitment there.

Now, take a look at exclusivity in relationships, and how it affects commitment. If exclusivity is a requirement for the relationship (romance, business partnership, whatever), then you've got all your eggs in one basket, so to speak. You're forbidden from setting up alternate options, which means that if the relationship dissolves you're left with nothing, and have to start over from zero. You're setting up a situational commitment: There is a cost to leaving, making it the easiest choice to stay, even if your heart isn't in it. This is a huge difference from open relationships, where you explicitly have other options readily available, and leaving only means that you don't get to continue.

What does this mean? Well, just as with school, it means you're probably going to deal with issues that arise, instead of just leaving. It takes a really big issue to get you to leave, because the cost of leaving is so high. You'll have fights but will work things out, and you'll be safer joining money matters because your partner won't leave so quickly.

After you've been together with someone for a while, you can look at the relationship and realize you've built something good. You can look back and realize that, even if you weren't situationally committed, you'd stay with them, because you care about continuing the relationship. Perhaps you've realized that you're becoming a better person for it, perhaps you've realized that you really like spending time with them, or perhaps you've realized that their presence makes your life better somehow. This is the hope.

There's another option. After you've been together with someone for a while, you can look at the relationship and realize that you've built something bad. You can look back and realize that, if you weren't situationally committed, you'd leave in a heartbeat. If you build something bad enough, as with college, it might be worth leaving anyway. And if that cost of leaving were to vanish -- for instance, by randomly (or purposefully) coming across another option, like another lover for emotional support or a different business partner -- you would leave. Then, exclusivity becomes what's keeping you together.

That other option is really bad. It's like the student who hates school, but is sloshing through it anyway just to get through it, because it hasn't gotten bad enough to warrant the cost of leaving yet. That student will probably never finish anyway, and just incur more loans as he keeps taking the short-sighted easy decision of one more quarter until he can't stand it anymore. It becomes a balancing act between the cost of leaving and the cost of staying, and that's just not fun for anyone involved, especially if it continues.

With exclusivity, you're gaining a situational commitment. That is, you're manipulating the environment around you to enforce a situational commitment, regardless of where one's internal commitment lies. This isn't always bad, by any means. It's great if, for example, you need a kickstart to build something. It gives you the safety of an environmentally enforced commitment, while reasons for an internal commitment can be explored and possibly created. This is often an excellent idea, and can lead to the first option, above, where you'd stay with them even if that situational commitment were to vanish.

With an open relationship, you're avoiding that situational commitment. You don't have the option of depending on it while you build something. On the other hand, you also can't get into that choice between a rock and a hard place, where you have to decide between the cost of leaving and the cost of staying. All commitments that exist are internal commitments.

What does this mean? It means that your partner has no reason to leave you, other than wanting to leave you. It means that if they want to leave you, there's nothing external that's stopping them. I'll say it outright: They're more likely to leave you, and they're more likely to do it sooner.

But! If you can manage to actually build something worth keeping, that first option above, they won't want to leave. The ones who leave will either leave before something is built (the downside of being in an open relationship), or after something bad is built (the upside). Whoever stays, you know they stayed due to an internal commitment, which isn't subject to environmental fluctuations, like meeting a hot secretary at work, or a one-time better price on a business deal.

Really, it's all the same arguments as for and against a free or controlled market.

What does all this mean? Well, if you think you have good chances of building something without any need for environmentally enforced commitments, then try open relationships. If you think you have bad chances of building something without environmentally enforced commitments, try exclusive relationships. Or, if you're like me and place great importance on avoiding the possibility of that bad, second option, go for open relationships. If you're not like me and place great importance on avoiding the possibility of losing a great partner at the beginning due to environmental fluctuations, go for exclusive relationships.

Personal choice and all that, but I for one prefer to avoid situational commitments. I don't seem to have problems building relationships worth keeping, even without that particular safety net.

Tenuously connected thoughts.

It seems that many people conflate "commitment" with "exclusivity". They're not the same thing, obviously. I was wondering why a lot of people equated them, at least in interpersonal relationships, and then it hit me: If you are exclusive, you are committed. It's like putting all your eggs in one basket, which by default gives you reason to commit to protecting that basket. The reverse statement, if you are not exclusive then you are not committed, is not true. It's the standard bit of bad logic: If P then Q, so if not P then not Q. This is wrong, but a lot of poeple think that way, anyway. In any case, if you're unable to point to commitment, then your only measure of commitment in an interpersonal relationship would be looking to see if it's exclusive or not. If it's exclusivve, there's commitment, and if it's not exclusive, you really don't know. If you want commitment, and you're blind to seeing it directly, then why would you take that chance? Makes sense to me now.

I seem to have a different view of commitment to relationships than most people. I commit to making the relationship as good as it can be. Apparently, most people commit to making the relationship survive. That seems silly to me on many levels. First of all, the relationship always exists, even if it changes to become a bad relationship, or an apathetic one. You can't kill a relationship, you can only change it. Second, if you're committed to making it subsist, you're not focused on making it a good one -- and as it's easier (at first) to maintain a bad relationship than a good one, you're giving yourself motivation to make it a bad one. When you commit to making your relationships as good as they can be, the survival of the relationship kinda works itself out. After all, people like being in good relationships. It feels nice.

People are funny. How can you get so hung up on "this is the way it's supposed to be done" when people had vastly different dating patterns 20 years ago, and vastly different dating patterns 20 years before that, and different yet again 20 years prior to even that? It springs forth an intense sense of righteousness, anyway.

If you think you're worthy of being loved for who you are, do you need the safety blanket of exclusivity? It seems that people who are very insecure will want someone who will validate their insecurity, in the form of not caring for them, giving them evidence that they have no reason to be secure. Hello, abusive relationships and swinging. It seems that people who are a little insecure will want someone who will validate their insecurity, in the form of caring for them only if they have no other options. Hello, stereotypical monogamy. It seems that people who are secure in themselves will want someone to validate their security, in the form of caring for them even in the presence of other easy options. Hello, healthy monogamy and, with even more security, open relationships. Validation of self worth as the common theme.

More thoughts, less time...