MOOP!

And the third subject, Amore. Well, this one I think I have even less to say. It has occurred to me that I've never been In Love, and that there is a difference between Love and In Love. for the sake of clarity I'm going to define Love as Complete Acceptance of someone, accepting all their faults and all their values, and deciding to ally with them in some form of another just as they are. In this way, I can fully say that I love my friends, you folks, And I love my family. Not just your good qualities, but you as wholes. As for In Love, I shall describe that as being in a state where mutual Love between two parties is the core and defining feature of the relationship that exists between them. Almost, in love for the sake of being in love... I think my definition for In Love requires the existence of a traditional-style relationship. the one real relationship I had was really more friendship based, not centered around being In Love. I am not sure if I am inclined to have an In Love relationship at all. There is no attraction in it for me. I am much more interested in becoming the non-romantic life partner of someone awesome who may not fall in love with me than trying to find someone to be traditional romantic life partners with. As for polyamory, well, I would not reject such an idea, it just seems, you know, even more unlikely than ending up in a relationship with One person, so I doubt it'll ever apply to me.
I do know that I'm perfectly fine with open relatioships, I guess that reveals things right there. But then....

I guess since I have such trouble applying relationship ideas to myself, I could talk about my impression of relationships in general.
From what I've seen, relationships among humans are a social phenomenon, rather than a... physiological one. We are designed to be attracted, and, sure, feel love for people, but the long-term, exclusive bonding that happens looks to me like something that society collectively decided. The rules around relationships, who you can sleep with, for example, come in the form of an unspoken Agreement about how people behave while dating. This reminds me of our conversation about the distinction between Dating and Going Steady, which has fallen out of the public agreement. When two people date, they are trained by Society to automatically assume that this means that they won't do anything sexual with anyone else. no kissing, no having sex, no looking at other people naked, etc. Some people take this farther than others, which results in dissagreements and jealousy.
If one person figures Relationship means no making out with other girls, but going to the bar with a woman friend is okay, and the other person takes Relationship to mean that time is not to be spent with any other girl alone, they will feel Jealous when they realize some other girl has been doing what they assumed was their exclusive right to do.

I guess that's about all I can think of on the subject. I suppose I had more Thoughts than I figured... it's simply Experience I don't have much of. I always have thoughts to spare.