The Allure of Convenience
Stub • 205 Words • Love/Romance, 2024 • 04/02/2024
⚠️ This post contains a rougher cut of my thoughts on the topic and may be updated in the future. Please forgive any mistakes or lack of polish!
This article is part of the Abolishing Romance Anthology.
I believe that part of the reason why the modern romantic relationship collapses the therapist, roommate, partner, and more into one is because it is an easier social structure. It is not the easiest to maintain however.
There are 207 words in this article, and it will probably take you less than 2 minutes to read it.
This article was published 2024-04-02 00:00:00 -0400, which makes this post and me old when I published it.
I think that the all-in-one romantic relationship happened because it is easy. It is simple. The lower input energy and effort required for something to happen has allowed it to win by default. More complex relationships outside of the monogamous norm require more effort in that there are more people to balance but also because you have to swim upstream against social norms.
- Are dyads inherently more stable? I don’t think so but they pretty much a priori take up less energy than a poly structure.
undying immortal love is beautiful and seductive as a concept but also impossible
why does romantic love strive for foreverness? humans love immortality
we want forever in some ways it speaks to the difficulty of finding someone and settling down with what you can get
we want our partner to be our sexual partner, housemate, co-parent, therapist, etc putting all our eggs in one basket
the spouse as our best friend has been misinterpreted really we need that deep connection and playfulness that ain’t reliant on desire and attraction (liking someone as a person as opposed to an object of desire) and instead we’ve taken it to mean that our spouse should be the best friend above all else