Some thughts on polyamory, loss, and superheroes

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A few days ago, I had a visit from a friend I haven’t seen in quite some time. We spent a bit of time catching up on what the two of us have been up to in the past couple of years–her move, my move, my divorce, and so on. She’d heard some of the more lurid and wildly inaccurate details of the divorce, of course–not surprising, really, as it seems like everyone within a three hundred mile radius or so has heard at least something about the situation.

At one point, she said, “Well, it must have been easier on you than on her, because, after all, you’ve got Shelly.”

Now, this is an attitude I’ve encountered before, and it seems based on a conception of relationships that’s quite foreign to me. It’s difficult to know where to begin in taking that idea apart, as it’s founded on so many tacit assumptions and unspoken ideas about the way relationships work and the way love works that it’s hard to know how to start addressing them.

The first and most obvious problem with that idea is that it assumes human beings are interchangeable commodities, like toasters or DVD players. These things provide a service; a person who has two toasters can still make bread if one of them stops working, and a person with two lovers still has sex and companionship if one of the relationships ends, right?

Now, let’s step back for a moment and think about that. Suppose a family had two young children, and one of them was killed in a car accident. Would anyone say “Well, it must be easier for you; after all, you still have another child?” I suspect anyone who displayed that level of insensitivity to their loss could expect to get smacked. We somehow know instinctively that children aren’t replaceable; a parent who has lost a child is devastated regardless of whether he or she has another child or not. We know this; yet, somehow, it’s different if it’s a romantic relationship, right?

So why is it that romantic relationships are different? Why does everyone understand that children are not interchangeable, but still assume that lovers are?

For many people, I think the answer is the same as the answer to questions like “Why would you assume that if your partner has sex with someone else, he won’t need you any more?” and “Why would you assume that if your lover finds someone who’s prettier than you, or better than you in bed (for whatever value of ‘better in bed’), it will threaten our relationship.” And that answer is related to the reason that peopl are willing to risk losing their jobs to fly out to California and picket in support of Michael Jackson.

These people are utterly convinced of Michael’s innocence because they actually feel, weird as it may seem, intimacy with Michael Jackson, even though he’s a complete stranger to them and they’ve never met him.

This sense of intimacy is as false as it is shallow; and it’s not limited to Jacko. People feel a sort of wishful, warm fuzzy sensation often–about celebrities, about their partners, about that girl in the next cubicle that they have a secret crush on. This “intimacy” is not really intimacy at all; real intimacy lets you see right through a person and down deep into what Shelly calls their “superhero soul,” past appearance and mpast superficial details and into what makes them who they are.

There’s a Simpson’s episode in where one of the children asks Mrs. Rrabapple, the schoolteacher, “How will we know when we’re in love?” The teacher laughs and says “”Don’t be silly, most of you will never know love and will marry out of fear of dying alone.” Sadly, I do believe that for many people, it’s the truth. It seems to me that the world is filled with people who don’t want intimacy, who don’t like it and don’t trust it, who don’t take the time to really see their partners’ “superhero soul” and don’t want anyone seeing theirs. Remove intimacy from a relationship, though, and suddenly people do become interchangeable. Suddenly people do become vehicles for services. Suddenly there’s nothing particularly compelling about them; “Well, Betty was a redhead who liked tennis, and Lauren is a blond who likes golf, but basically I get the same thing from both of them. Lauren is prettier than Betty, so I think I’ll replace Betty with Lauren.” And I think that somewhere, deep down inside, some people realize that they don’t have any deep intimacy with their partners; many petty jealousies and insecurities reflect this. “I don’t want my partner looking at anyone prettier than me…” (…because, really, there’s nothing particularly compelling about my relationship with my partner; my partner doesn’t really see me, and yes, my partner would replace me with someone prettier if I let him).

Once you’ve seen down into someone’s superhero soul, once you’ve cut past all the clutter and really seen someone for all they are and all they can be, then that person becomes absolutely unique and absolutely irreplaceable in your eyes. At that point, nobody can replace that person; at that point, if you lose your relationship with that person, it leaves a hole in your life nobody else can fill.

Of course, there’s a cloud around every silver lining. The downside is vulnerability; if you let someone really see you, that person knows you for who you are–good and bad. You’re vulnerable like nothing before; your relationship shines a light on all your faults and personal failings and quirks and little neuroses, and to someone not accustomed to real intimacy, I’d imagine that’s pretty scary.

Now, you might ask why someone would want a relationship without intimacy, and I’d say “for the reason Mrs. Crabapple said. Fear of dying alone.” Even a shallow relationship is better than being alone, no? So people engage in relationships that are more or less interchangeable, with partners who are more or less interchangeable, and they invest a great deal of emotional energy into making sure that their partners don’t replace them with someone else–because, hey, then they’d be alone.

Personally, I think that fear of being alone is a lousy reason to be in a relationship. If I had a partner who was willing to replace me because she found someone better looking or better in bed or (god forbid) a better cook than I am, I’d want to find out sooner rather than later. To my way of thinking, preventing your partner from talking to or spending time with other people through fear of being replaced is exactly backwards; if I’m that easily replaced, I want to know, because that’s not a relationship I want to invest in. But that pesky fear of being alone is hard to short-circuit, isn’t it? “If I lose my partner, I’ll be alone, and nothing is worse than that.”

Funny thing, though. If you can look at someone and really see them, if you have developed the skills to see another person’s superhero soul, you will never be alone–it’s not going to happen. Doesn’t matter what you look like, or how good you are in bed, or even (thankfully) how good you are in the kitchen.

There is another cloud around the silver lining, though. A person who’s unique to you can’t be replaced–and that means it does not matter how many partners you have, once that person is no longer in your life, it’s going to hurt. Nobody else will make it better. It’s not about getting the things you need from your other partners; it’s not about having another toaster, so you can still make toast. A partner who is unique is irreplaceable. We know this about children; it’s time, I think, we understood this about lovers as well.

A post about music

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I have a couple of posts brewing, about AI and Turing machines and human consciousness and drunken goth chicks, and about common misperceptions in polyamory. However, chipotle tagged me to do a “six favorite songs” meme, so I’m doing that instead. Without further ado, and in no particular order:

Evanescence, Lies

Evanescence is an interesting group. It’s rare to find a female-fronted pop band that has anything interesting to say, or that does anything novel lyrically or musically; it’s rarer still to find a female-fronted pop band that can successfully combine elements from many different musical genres and create something novel that still hangs together well. Their first album, Origin, is virtually impossible to find in the United States (Fallen is billed as their “first album” here in the US, even though it’s the second). Lies is a meld of old-fashioned pop and thrash metal, which works better than you might think.

Linkin Park, In the End

A lot of the music I like lives on the intersection of what seems to be radically different genres, and creates novelty out of the chaos. Linkin Park combines rap, alternative, and a dash of metal, and does it brilliantly; everything they do is good. They’re rather like Shakespeare in that regard–they really are quite good, in spite of all the people who say they really are quite good.

Sisters of Mercy, Driven Like the Snow

No list of mine would be complete without some old-school goth, and you can’t say ‘old-school goth’ without also saying ‘Sisters of Mercy’ in there somewhere, unless perhaps you’re saying something like ‘I don’t know a damn thing about,’ but I digress. I was introduced to Sisters of Mercy by an old friend’s girlfriend, during a time in the ongoing slow-motion trainwreck of his romantic life she took a moment off from cheating on him, getting engaged to someone else, breaking up with him, getting back with him, cheating on him again, cheating on him yet again, breaking up with him, getting back together with him, cheating on him again, and marrying some other guy without telling anyone, just long enough to make me a mixed tape of Sisters music. I never did thank her properly for that. Sisters is smart, danceable, witty, and takes incredible glee in playing with language.

A Perfect Circle, 3 Libras

Shelly and I have been spending a lot of time lately talking about (and she’s been writing about) what it means to be “seen” by your lover–what it means to have a partner who really gets you, who sees past all the surface stuff and right down into your superhero soul. That’s precisely what this song is about–or rather, more precisely, this song is about a person whose partner doesn’t get it. To be fair, I’d venture a guess that the overwhelming majority of the human beings walking, crawling, and driving around the surface of this planet also don’t “get” it, and have never really seen their partners or been seen by them, which is why people will say such insipid things as “Well, if you’re poly, then that makes it easier to lose a partner, because you still have another partner to fall back on, right?” But then again, on my more cynical days I think a walk through the ocean of most people’s soul will scarcely get your feet wet.

Front 242, Headhunter v1.0

What can I say? The best song to dance to ever written, by anyone, in any genre, in the entire history of humankind, period.

Apoptygma Berzerk, Burnin’ Heretic

Sometimes a little too close to home in the Theocracy of Ayatollah Bush the Second. I first heard this song some time after dumping the contents of datan0de‘s iPod onto my laptop during a party one evening, where it sat gathering (virtual) dust for some months before I listened to it, which is about the way it goes with music and me. When I did finally listen to it, I leapt from my chair and roared, “Hear me! This is the best fucking song EVER!” (Well, actually, I didn’t. But I did think “Hey, I really like this…”)

Now, according to the rules of the game, I’m supposed to tag three more people and get them to do the same thing in their journal. So, just for the hell of it (and because i do so love exercising power), I tag datan0de, latexiron, and sarahmichigan. You’re it!

Bullshit! And other fun stuff

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Spent most of the day yesterday with phyrra, nihilus, and nekidsteve, working on a role-playing game hat nihilus is putting together, and updating my Web site…props to sarahmichigan for her suggestions and proofreading.

Then, we watched a bunch of episodes of Showtime’s Penn & Teller: Bullshit! For anyone not fortunate enough to have seen this show…I can’t recommend it enough. It relentlessly skewers and debunks bullshit of all types, from the idea of the “traditional family” (a brilliant episode, which talked very positively about polyamory) to to ESP and “remote viewing” to feng shui.

And, after watching a large number of back-to-back episodes, I am pleased to announce:

The Unofficial
OFFICIAL PENN & TELLER: BULLSHIT! DRINKING GAME!

The rules, as with most drinking games, are very simple. The participants need their favorite libation of choice and a television set. Ready? Here we go!

As you watch an episode of Bullshit, be on the lookout for certain things. When you see your cues, drink up!

Things that are worth a sip

Take a sip of your beverage:

– Whenever Penn says “bullshit,” “asshole,” or “fuck”
– Whenever the show directly contradicts a statement made by a guest and provides evidence or a citation to back up the contradiction. (A citation provided by another guest counts.)
– Whenever the giant prop of the bull with the red horns makes an appearance (yes, the opening credits count)

Things that are worth a drink

Take a drink of your beverage:

– Whenever Penn says the exact phrase “And then there’s this asshole…”
– Whenever Penn insults God directly
– Whenever Penn insults a guest on that show before that guest has had a chance to introduce himself
– Whenever Penn insults a guest’s clothing
– Whenever a guest says something that makes Penn really, really angry
– Whenever Teller uses any kind of tool or implement to cut or pretend to cut any object

Things that are worth a chug

All players must chug their beverage:

– Whenever Penn compares any guest to a character in a movie, play, or television show
– Whenever Penn challenges God to strike him dead
– Whenever Teller removes any article of clothing, or anything approximating an article of clothing
– Whenever a naked person appears
– Whenever Penn says he never drinks. (The irony is just TOO delicious.)

Aargh! Or, when is writing not the same as WRITING?

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Yesterday, i didn’t go into the office at all, but instead stayed home and spent the day working on More than Two, the book on polyamory I’m writing. An entire afternoon of sitting and staring at a blinking cursor, and I end up with three pages to show for it. I’m up to fifty pages total so far; at this rate, it’s going to take another year to finish this draft!

I actually have an editor now, who is not (bless her heart) pestering me for material in the slightest, but still. I can’t figure out why it’s turning into such a struggle. I write every day, on LiveJournal and newsgroups and mailing lists and whatnot; hell, i can sit down to respond to something in a newsgroup and end up writing two thousand words without even blinking. But a book? Every word is an ordeal. And it’s ot like I don’t know what to say; I know exactly what I want to say. It’s just proving to be remarkably difficult to say it.

And this morning, while I was stepping out of the shower, the cat caught and ate a bug. Eww!

Some thoughts on relationship rules

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The main post office for the Tampa Bay area is near my office; I tend to have to go there fairly often. Attached to the post office is a United States Passport Office as well. Might not seem like that has anything to do with relationships, but I’m getting there, I promise…

The Passport Office is a single tiny room, about eight feet by twelve feet, and there’s a desk and about four or five chairs in it. Whenever I go to the post office, on any given day there are about 25 or 30 people waiting to get passports.

Now, I’ve never had to get a passport, but even assuming the people who work in the passport office are phenomenally efficient for bureaucrats (which I doubt) and can process each person in about two minutes (which I doubt), that means those 30 people are waiting there for an hour or so.

There’s no room in the passport office for thirty people, so every time I go to the post office I see a lot of people waiting in the tiny concrete courtyard just outside the passport office. The courtyard is ringed by a low concrete wall, about three feet high.

The wall is plastered with signs that say “Do Not Sit on Wall.” It seems clear what’s happened here–people go to the passport office, they end up waiting for an hour (or, likely, a lot longer), there’s no room in the office for them, and there’s no place to sit. So, they sit on the wall, somebody somewhere didn’t like people sitting on the wall, a rule was made, signs were printed and stuck to the wall.

What’s interesting is that it seems the bureaucrats did not think about why people were sitting on the wall. People were sitting on the wall because there’s no place else to sit, and because standing on concrete for an hour or more is no picnic. Had the bureaucrats actually wanted to solve the problem, there was no need to pass a “no sitting on the wall” rule; all they really needed to do was put some benches out in the courtyard, and let people sit on those.

I’ve been in relationships with similar rules. It seems like a very human impulse to say “I don’t like people doing X, so the way to address people doing X is to tell them not to do X;” it’s much more difficult to say “I don’t like people doing X. Why are these people doing X? Why don’t I like people doing X? Is there some change i can make in my environment such that people won’t do X any more, or some change i can make in myself such that when someone does X, it doesn’t bother me?”

In the past several years, I’ve tried to make a conscious effort, whenever I’m thinking about or talking about relationship rules, to identify the “whys” behind my behavior, the behaviors of my partners, and the things about those behaviors that are significant to me or to them, and then put chairs in the courtyard rather than putting signs on the wall. The results, both in terms of the way my relationship structures look and in terms of my own personal happiness, have been nothing short of amazing.

Sometimes, a little change in worldview makes all the difference.

Funny, sometimes, how life works.

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Some time ago, my T-shirt site Villain Tees was featured in a computer gamer magazine. As it turns out, there’s a reason I’d never heard of that magazine; it’s a European, not an American, publication. As a result fo the article, I’m getting a lot more T-shirt sales, and business has really picked up…but most of the people ordering are in the UK, Sweden, or France.

And, inteestingly, the most popular T-shirt with Americans, “sud rm -r /” and “nanohazard,” is not the most popular T-shirt with Europeans. The most popular design with Europeans? “Machiavelli was Right.” Does that show that Europeans are more literate than Americans, or Americans are geekier than Europeans?

Yesterday, I was contacted by one of the editors of PC Home magazine, asking for permission to include some of my shareware software on a CD accompanying one of their upcoming issues, which is very cool. What’s interesting is that one of the pieces of software they want to include is Registry Permission Tool, a program I wrote to unlock a write-protected Registry file. I wrote it when i was dealing with a virus on a client’s computer; some viruses lock the Registry file to prevent a user from using RegEdit to remove virus calls from the Registry. This program has been banned by several shareware sites (such as TuCows) because these sites are afraid people in corporate or educational labs will use it to unlock a Registry file that’s been locked by the IT department for security reasons. Stupid, really; does anyone actually lock a Registry file as a means of controlling user access to the Registry? Wouldn’t this break, oh, most of the software out there?

Today’s philosophical musings

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“The pen is mightier than the sword, but not as mighty as a flying cybernetic monkey with death-ray eyes.” Discuss.

The obligatory musings on Star Wars–not the newest movie, but the secret behind them all

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Okay. So no real reason to critique Star Wars Episode III; it was exactly what I expected, which is to say clumsy direction, lots of eye-candy special effects, stunningly awful dialog (I actually slid down my seat and covered my face in embarrassment for George Lucas in a few of the scenes), lots of light-saber duels, and lots of screen time for Yoda. Better than the first two; not as good as it could have been. In short–about what everyone else is saying about the movie.

But i didn’t come here to talk about Episode III; I came here to talk about the dark secret that lies behind all the Star Wars movies, a dark secret that even George Lucas himself does not know. Once you understand this dark secret, and you re-interpret all six movies in light of it, many things in the movies suddenly make a whole lot more sense.

The dark secret is this:

Yoda is a Dark Sider.

Yes, you read that right. Yoda has given himself to the Dark Side of the Force, and in secret, subtle ways, helps the Sith to the best of his abilities throughout all the movies.

Yes, I know how that sounds. But think about all six movies, and bear with me here:

– Is the Jedi Council really that appallingly stupid and incompetent? I mean, really. C’mon. The Sith Lord is in the same goddamn room as them, and they can’t tell! He makes a blindingly direct and obvious play for power, and they can’t tell! Either the Jedi Academy requires IQ tests of all its applicants, and rejects anyone with an IQ over 85, or something else is up–namely, the most powerful member of the Council is working to ensure that the rest of hte Council stays in the dark.

– Yoda outclasses Count Dooku sixteen ways from Sunday–a better fighter, more powerful in the Force, and all-around better at everything he does–yet in the second movie, Dooku still somehow manages not only to escape, but to escape with the plans to the Death Star.

– Yoda doesn’t really seriously go after Sidius in the third movie. He makes a token show of it, gets the upper hand…and leaves. Not exactly convincing. Not exactly an overwhelming attempt from a person who’s just seen his friends murdered and is determined to protect the universe from sliding into the hands of the Sith at all costs. “Okay, tried I did. Leaving now I am. Ruling the universe you are. With how well that works out for you get back to me!”

– For a light-sider, Yoda has a whole lot of knowledge and skill at dealing with that crackly lightning-both dark side energy stuff; more, it seems, than…well, any Jedi, y’know?

– Yoda meets Luke. Yoda trains Luke. Luke takes off to go after Vader. Yoda says “No, wait you must, not ready you are, kick your ass he will…here, help you pack I will! Fun storming the castle you have!” Yoda’s goal was to get Luke captured.

– And speaking of getting people captured, great plan for hiding the babies, there, my little green friend. Geez, you sure tucked THEM out of sight! I mean, if Vader ever glommed on to the fact that he had a son running around somehwere, he’d NEVER think to start the search at his own family!

– Knowledge of the Clone Army in Episode II, and indeed knowledge of the entire star system where the clone army was being developed, was mysteriously wiped from the Jedi archives. By an insider. By an influential insider. They never did really address who that insider was, did they? Hmm…who would be in a position to do such a thing? Who indeed.

Seriously. Go back and re-watch the movies with the idea that Yoda is a Dark Sider in mind, and tell me that it doesn’t suddenly bring a lot of things into focus.

A bevy of quotes!

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Working on cataloging some quotes for the Quotes files for my Zen fortune cookie program, and I figured I’d post a few of them here:

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on man unless they act. ~G.K. Chesterton

The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought. – Leon Blum

Truth often suffers more from the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers. — William Penn

Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six. — Leo Tolstoy

We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the same sense and to the same extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. – H. L. Mencken

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. — Stephen Roberts

Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error. — George Bernard Shaw

True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance. – Akhenaton

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped or turned back, for their private benefit. –Robert Heinlein

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. — Bertrand Russell

Some thoughts on information theory, complex systems, and love

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Often, when two people end a long-term relationship, one of those two people — usually, the person initiating the breakup — will say things like ‘I just don’t know you any more” or “You’ve totally changed.” And often, it’s not true, though the person saying it may feel that it’s true. The truth is a little bit more complicated, and a quick glance at information theory can explain why.

One of the axioms of information theory is that the output of a system you do not understand looks random. Early man lacked the ability to predict such things as solar eclipses and whatnot because he did not understand the system; he knew nothing of gravity, didn’t understand that the earth orbits ’round the sun, and so on. So these events appeared random to him, and he invented explanations for them that were based on random events — the dragon wakes up particularly hungry and devours the sun, that sort of thing.

As time progressed, man learned to predict certain events, such as the course of the planets in the heavens and the rising and setting of the sun as the seasons changed. The models he built were based on repeated observation; he could predict certain events, but he still did not understand the mechanisms behind them; repeated observation was enough to show that the system wasn’t random, but it still couldn’t be predicted precisely, because he still didn’t understand it. Certain events, like eclipses, still appeared random.

This is true of any system whose mechanisms are not understood. The process of understanding something lies in constructing models of that thing; the ancient Greeks attempted to model the behavior of the planetary bodies by constructing models based on rotating, interlocking Platonic solids, for example. A model is useful, and can be said to describe something, only if that model makes predictions that accurately predict the behavior of the thing being modelled. The Greeks ran into a lot of trouble here; their models of the heavens made predictions that were reasonably close, most of the time, but didn’t always jive with observable reality; the more they tried to jigger the models to account for the discrepancies, the more mucked-up and complex the models became, until finally Copernicus got exasperated with it all and said “Here, look, it’s got nothing to do with Platonic solids, see? If you assume that the sun is at the center of the whole mess, and we go ’round the sun, and the other planets go ’round the sun, you get a model that’s very simple and makes predictions that are pretty much perfect, see?” In 1992, the Catholic Church finally agreed, and officially accepted the heliocentric model of the solar system.

The output of a system that is not understood at all looks random. As someone learns to find patterns in the output, and builds models that explain the behavior of the system, the output stops looking random — but, as the Greeks discovered, a model that seems good, and makes accurate preductions some or even most of the time, can still be completely bolloxed. The Platonic-solids model made reasonably good predictions much of the time, but it wasn’t really a terribly accurate model; in fact, it wasn’t even close.

So what does this have to do with love?

The same laws of information theory that apply to planets and solar systems apply to people as well. If you don’t know someone and don’t know a blasted thing about him, you probably can’t predict his behavior very well. You can predict very general things, simply by knowing that he belongs to the class of objects called “human beings,” of course; you can predict that he most likely doesn’t have wings, and so on. But you can’t make predictions about how trustworthy he is, what kind of music he likes, how good he is in bed — despite the best efforts of astrology, fringe racist groups, and those goody urban legends that say things like a man’s penis size is related to the width of his hands. Fact is, until you have a reasonably good mental model of that person, you just plain don’t know what he’ll do — his behavior might as well be random.

When you’re in a relationship with someone, you have a pretty good opportunity to observe that person’s behavior over an extended period of time. When you do this, you begin to see patterns emerge, and those patterns let you begin understanding that person. You build a mental model of that person, and as that model seems to predict that person’s behavior, you understand that person still more. In fact, intimacy is the ongoing process of learning to understand another person with greater and greater accuracy.

But it’s possible to go wrong. People tend to re-create the world in their own image, and to project their own feelings and beliefs and philosophies onto other people. This is to some extent unavoidable; it’s very difficult to understand a person who conceptualizes the universe in a way that’s completely different from the way you do. Your model of that person starts with the assumption that certain things about that person are basically similar to certain things about you. And given that many people are similar in many ways, often that works just fine.

But sometimes, two people who are very different in worldview get together. When this happens, it’s possible they may never really understand each other; they may build mental models which, like the original Greek model of the solar system, work pretty well most of the time…but which are actually built on premises which are completely inaccurate.

So these two people go be-bopping down the road of life, not really understanding one another, but thinking they do — and wham, a solar eclipse occurs. Something changes in the environment — perhaps something that goes completely unnoticed, because it’s not relevant to the mental models they’ve built of each other — and one of them acts in some way that the other one never saaw coming and could never have anticipated.

“You’ve changed! You’ve completely lost it! I don’t know you any more!”

No, the fact is, that person is the same as he’s always been; you never knew him. You thought you did, but that understanding was flawed; and now your model can’t predict his behavior any more. Which means that, to you, his behavior appears random — a very scary thing in a partner you’ve been with for a long time.

The greater the difference in two people’s worldviews, the more likely this can happen. It’s especially common when two people who have very different drives or needs in relationship get together; each tends to project his own needs and his own drives into his model of the other. Even where it doesn’t cause a meltdown, it can still create problems in the relationship; “My partner says she is ‘polyamorous,’ which means she wants to fuck other people — I better keep her on a short leash, because if I don’t, she’ll just run off and fuck everyone in town.” This is not a realistic model of ‘polyamory’ — but a person who is not polyamorous may not really understand polyamory; the behavior of a person who is polyamorous may appear random.

Building an accurate model of something, especially a complex system, is very hard work. Building a good model means being able to step back from your own preconceptions and look — really look — at the system, without projecting your own desires onto it. the Greeks really, really wanted to believe that the model of the universe had something to do with Platonic solids, because they were utterly fascinated with what they perceived to be the harmony and beauty of Platonic solids, and it bolloxed them up for a very long time.

Which brings me to the second part of building a model of something, which is being able to discard that model when it makes predictions that don’t come true.

That second one is especially difficult in romantic relationships. Like the Greeks, people in love become emotionally attached to their understanding of their partner, even if that understanding is based on projection. We tend to re-create the world in our own image, but more than that, we want our lover to be like ourselves; it’s comforting. Things we don’t understand about our lover are really scary; they make our lover’s behavior seem random. It’s much easier to embrace a model that has flaws than to discard the model, say “Actually, there are things about this person I don’t understand, and if i want to understand them, I must first admit that I don’t.”

That takes work — a lot of it. Scary work. The alternative, though, is having the conversation which usually starts with You’ve changed, I just don’t know you any more and usually ends the relationship.