Watch This If You're Ready to Rethink Romantic Relationships

"it feels like people turn to these like almost carceral punishments for going outside of the bounds of like a perfectly healed person instead of just accepting where that person is at and saying they can't meet my needs right now and that doesn't mean that I can diagnose them with like mental illness or they're like a morally incomprehensible person it just means my needs and my wants fall outside of the bounds of this person's capacity"

• stems from control

  • "i can change this person"

• Possession/ sense of ownership in monogamous relationships

• "Static things that people can own"

"When I think about loving this person can I give to them in a way that helps them figure out their wants and needs can I participate in their wants and needs in a good way that respects their boundaries can I help you grow can I help you heal can I help you prune the things that don't serve you including me if I am one of those things. if you are struggling can I help you survive if you are surviving can I help you thrive?" - @instageorgious

• <3 <3 <3

Possession is imbedded in our language about relationships and romance.

• "to have and to hold" "he's mine"

Commitment

• not ready to be owned?

• the good ol ball and chain

The more choices we have, the more we fear making the wrong choices

Love has been put in a container that has always been about possession

Fake fairness is killing friendships

• "the fear of losing oneself in it whether it's with a partner or a friend a parent or a community, when we feel like caring for someone else will cost us our agency, we start

  making tiny dangerous bargains"

  • Shrinking yourself

  • mutual deprivation

    • Shared scarcity masquerading as compromise

  • Ongoing performative restriction

    • systemically denying wants/needs because you think it's the right thing to do

    • making assumptions

• but relationships aren't about mirroring exact needs, it's about generosity, appreciation of differences and negotiating needs

"i dreamed of someone asking me better questions"

"it's about the discipline of continuing to find, not the thrill of being found"

The way that anna describes how neat it would be if we could design our relationships based off of the desires of the individuals in the relationship, as opposed to the rules and regulations that we are taught by society--- idk, i just feel like this is almost something I've desired and have been trying to do for a long time. I mean, as soon as I started dating, I was like, "I don't want to follow all these gendered rules!!!" and so to me, relationships felt like they should be DIY. But as I got older, and I've gone through different life stages, it seemed harder and harder to DIY things.

Reminds me of the theory about traffic patterns from Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed