The right place at the right time.
Sep. 5th, 2012 12:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparrI am polyamorous and I fool around outside my romantic relationships. This should come as no surprise to most of the people who read my various online writings. I've recently stirred up some debate on the subject of "facebook stalking", particularly in a passive sense. This meshes tightly with my previous writing on the subject of friend zoning and poor decision making skills among serially monogamous people. So I've decided to bring that all together into yet another treatise on the subject of effective dating (and one-night-stand-ing) strategies for a socially awkward, brutally honest, forward-to-a-fault fellow who prefers people he knows over strangers.
To begin, I am going to describe a pattern of behavior that I have observed too many times to discount. I suspect you will recognize it, and can name acquaintances who fit the pattern. They will mostly be female, and that coupled with my preference for females leads to my not apologizing for choosing a female as my hypothetical subject here. A serially monogamous girl is in a committed relationship. It ends. She tells some of her friends and changes her relationship status online (Facebook, Fetlife, Google Plus, Myspace, Diaspora, etc). Within hours or days she goes back into "dating mode", considering potential suitors or beginning pursuit herself. A close friend or someone she just met meets all of her criteria, whatever they might be, and she's in a new relationship. This cycle repeats itself at some relatively consistent frequency, possibly eventually ending. I know a few girls who mix week-long and year-long relationships, but far more never stray an order of magnitude from their norm, always having 6-12 month or 2-4 year relationships. For the sake of the narrative, from here on out, you are that girl.
For the record, I know multiple girls for whom I fit into either the "I would date you if we weren't friends" or "I would fuck you if I was single" categories (or both, at different times), so I'm not really making up anything here. I'm just using this hypothetical so that I don't need to name names.
Two types of potential partners are excluded from your consideration by this pattern. One in all cases and influenced mostly by luck, the other in most cases and influenced mostly by choice.
First, there are people who did not hear about the breakup during the window of availability, most of whom are probably not going to make advances while they believe you are still in a relationship. Even close friends might miss out here, if they are distant enough, contact rare enough, or the window short enough. Unless you go out of your way to approach specific people about your relationship situation, which people you encounter during the window is a roll of the dice. Maybe the best potential partner is on vacation this month, or their phone is out of service this week, etc. Maybe you don't go to your usual hangouts due to feeling down.
Second, there is the case of friend zoning. Not the "I'm not attracted to you, let's be friends" sort of friend zoning, but the "I am attracted to you but I don't want to ruin our friendship with a relationship" sort. If you aren't the type of girl who practices this, then this doesn't apply to you, but most do. So you're excluding anyone you've gotten close to (but not romantic with) prior to the breakup. This is your choice, for following that strategy, and theirs, for becoming your friend in the first place.
Now, given the context of these observations and elaborations, I will describe some of my attitudes and strategies. Some of them aren't common. Some aren't popular. Most never get talked about, even if they are common and popular in practice. All are relevant to my relationship decision making process. None are certain, but all are weighed as options when I'm considering such things.
Unless I've seen evidence to the contrary, I assume that your current relationship is going to last about as long as your previous relationships have, and that it's going to end somewhere in the same section of the emotional gamut. If you've had a half dozen boyfriends-of-the-month and 5 of them ended with keyed cars and fistfights, it would be silly and counterproductive for anyone to think your seventh boyfriend is The One until at least a few months in. If you're newly single all fall semester of Freshman and Sophomore years of college, and you've got a new boyfriend during summer before Junior year starts, I'm not going to be making plans for him to be around at Christmas. If you don't ask for my thoughts on the matter than I won't say this to your face, but that doesn't mean I don't expect it, and my expectations drive my decision making and planning.
When it's convenient, I am going to make an effort to stay apprised of the public version of your relationship status. This might mean following you on G+, or subscribing to your feed on Facebook, or reading your LiveJournal. I'll probably even add you to the group of people whose statuses I pay more attention to than my acquaintances at large. If you think this is creepy, then I think you're being unreasonable, because half your male friends are doing the same thing already, I'm just the only one telling you about it. If you don't want to be on that list, please feel free to let me know.
If I discover that you're a practitioner of the sort of friend zoning that bothers me, and that discovery comes soon enough to do something about it, I might slow down our becoming of friends. There are value judgements to be made that are specific to each relationship, but in many potential scenarios I'd rather have you as an acquaintance for a year and a girlfriend for a year than as a friend for 2 years.
If you're in a longer monogamous relationship, I'm going to tell you at least once that I'm interested in you, and elaborate on how if you'd care to know. If you're in a relationship that isn't entirely monogamous, and haven't unconditionally rejected me already, I'm going to remind you every year or two that I'm interested in you. If you ask me to stop the reminders then I will, and will begin pursuit anew when you become single.
And, most importantly, I'm going to make known that these are my strategies, and when they change. I'm going to discuss them with you, if you care to know the details of why I'm dealing with you in the way that I am. This is, sadly, an objectively bad decision on my part, because NOT telling you what I'm doing leads to greater net results, if I discount my subjective value on being forward and honest. But I'm going to keep doing it, because so far I enjoy the positive results of this strategy more than I regret the potentially lost opportunities.
I hope this helps shed some light on these matters, and look forward to the feedback this post will get.
To begin, I am going to describe a pattern of behavior that I have observed too many times to discount. I suspect you will recognize it, and can name acquaintances who fit the pattern. They will mostly be female, and that coupled with my preference for females leads to my not apologizing for choosing a female as my hypothetical subject here. A serially monogamous girl is in a committed relationship. It ends. She tells some of her friends and changes her relationship status online (Facebook, Fetlife, Google Plus, Myspace, Diaspora, etc). Within hours or days she goes back into "dating mode", considering potential suitors or beginning pursuit herself. A close friend or someone she just met meets all of her criteria, whatever they might be, and she's in a new relationship. This cycle repeats itself at some relatively consistent frequency, possibly eventually ending. I know a few girls who mix week-long and year-long relationships, but far more never stray an order of magnitude from their norm, always having 6-12 month or 2-4 year relationships. For the sake of the narrative, from here on out, you are that girl.
For the record, I know multiple girls for whom I fit into either the "I would date you if we weren't friends" or "I would fuck you if I was single" categories (or both, at different times), so I'm not really making up anything here. I'm just using this hypothetical so that I don't need to name names.
Two types of potential partners are excluded from your consideration by this pattern. One in all cases and influenced mostly by luck, the other in most cases and influenced mostly by choice.
First, there are people who did not hear about the breakup during the window of availability, most of whom are probably not going to make advances while they believe you are still in a relationship. Even close friends might miss out here, if they are distant enough, contact rare enough, or the window short enough. Unless you go out of your way to approach specific people about your relationship situation, which people you encounter during the window is a roll of the dice. Maybe the best potential partner is on vacation this month, or their phone is out of service this week, etc. Maybe you don't go to your usual hangouts due to feeling down.
Second, there is the case of friend zoning. Not the "I'm not attracted to you, let's be friends" sort of friend zoning, but the "I am attracted to you but I don't want to ruin our friendship with a relationship" sort. If you aren't the type of girl who practices this, then this doesn't apply to you, but most do. So you're excluding anyone you've gotten close to (but not romantic with) prior to the breakup. This is your choice, for following that strategy, and theirs, for becoming your friend in the first place.
Now, given the context of these observations and elaborations, I will describe some of my attitudes and strategies. Some of them aren't common. Some aren't popular. Most never get talked about, even if they are common and popular in practice. All are relevant to my relationship decision making process. None are certain, but all are weighed as options when I'm considering such things.
Unless I've seen evidence to the contrary, I assume that your current relationship is going to last about as long as your previous relationships have, and that it's going to end somewhere in the same section of the emotional gamut. If you've had a half dozen boyfriends-of-the-month and 5 of them ended with keyed cars and fistfights, it would be silly and counterproductive for anyone to think your seventh boyfriend is The One until at least a few months in. If you're newly single all fall semester of Freshman and Sophomore years of college, and you've got a new boyfriend during summer before Junior year starts, I'm not going to be making plans for him to be around at Christmas. If you don't ask for my thoughts on the matter than I won't say this to your face, but that doesn't mean I don't expect it, and my expectations drive my decision making and planning.
When it's convenient, I am going to make an effort to stay apprised of the public version of your relationship status. This might mean following you on G+, or subscribing to your feed on Facebook, or reading your LiveJournal. I'll probably even add you to the group of people whose statuses I pay more attention to than my acquaintances at large. If you think this is creepy, then I think you're being unreasonable, because half your male friends are doing the same thing already, I'm just the only one telling you about it. If you don't want to be on that list, please feel free to let me know.
If I discover that you're a practitioner of the sort of friend zoning that bothers me, and that discovery comes soon enough to do something about it, I might slow down our becoming of friends. There are value judgements to be made that are specific to each relationship, but in many potential scenarios I'd rather have you as an acquaintance for a year and a girlfriend for a year than as a friend for 2 years.
If you're in a longer monogamous relationship, I'm going to tell you at least once that I'm interested in you, and elaborate on how if you'd care to know. If you're in a relationship that isn't entirely monogamous, and haven't unconditionally rejected me already, I'm going to remind you every year or two that I'm interested in you. If you ask me to stop the reminders then I will, and will begin pursuit anew when you become single.
And, most importantly, I'm going to make known that these are my strategies, and when they change. I'm going to discuss them with you, if you care to know the details of why I'm dealing with you in the way that I am. This is, sadly, an objectively bad decision on my part, because NOT telling you what I'm doing leads to greater net results, if I discount my subjective value on being forward and honest. But I'm going to keep doing it, because so far I enjoy the positive results of this strategy more than I regret the potentially lost opportunities.
I hope this helps shed some light on these matters, and look forward to the feedback this post will get.