#relationship discourse

[alexadelphia-official]

All my life I've had it drilled into me by many many many many people and channels of information that there's nothing more embarrassing or shameful than basing a relationship on something as fleeting and unstable as (clutches pearls) (sticks tongue out in disgust) feelings

After all, real relationships are based on pure commitment and shared values, and IF you are exceptionally lucky, anything beyond that is something that you get in the "honeymoon phase" (which could last an incredibly brief time out of the total five decades of your marriage or whatever; we've already established that feelings of love go away overnight and don't come back, so commitment to stay married is the only thing that'll keep you afloat for the majority of both your lifetimes 👍 but don't worry, studies show that married people are exponentially happier than everybody else ever ☝️ clearly, through the sheer power of commitment alone 😇 them actually liking each other's company is a fortunate accident that you should not count on but instead should be oh so content in your decades upon decades of zero romance 🙏 we promise it is somehow not drudgery to live like this, though, oh no 💅 the feeling that at least you're in a vastly superior life situation than those who jump from relationship to relationship because they let themselves fall in love should carry you very well throughout the years)

Yes this is obviously a caricature, but at this point in life I feel like this overly pragmatic view of marriage and relationship deserves as much mockery and scorn as the view of relationships which puts zero value on commitment and acts like feelings of attraction, infatuation, limerance or straight up lust are reason enough to constantly abandon the person you're with, forever chasing the next shiny new object of admiration. But if I mock the latter, I'm merely preaching to the choir. We ALL agree that this is the wrong way to approach relationships. But notice how I didn't use the word "love" or even "falling in love" to describe the view which completely de-emphasises commitment? That's because it simply is not and cannot be love in any real sense in the absence of commitment.

So, far from me to devalue commitment. I still believe it's one of the most important values one can hold, not only in relationships but in any aspect of life whatsoever.

I am, however, finally coming to terms with the fact that, in stark contrast to the standards presented in my culture and environment, I am, for better or for worse, a Feeling type. And an Idealist. And I - don't throw stones at me - unironically believe in soulmates and always have believed this ,until it was beaten out of me over and over again. Because real life is fundamentally cynical. Because feelings aren't real and if they are real they are fickle at best and evil at worst.

For the longest time I've deeply internalised this message about love and relationships. If you actually go after who you like, you'll end up in sin one way or another. And feelings are stupid and temporary anyway, so basically unimportant. So commitment (+ shared values) is the only thing that ever sustain a relationship. Whether you feel anything about each other is secondary.

Clearly I took this mindset with me in my first relationship. I was so elated at a guy finally liking me back that I overlooked such trivial notions as whether I truly liked him or just liked being in a relationship. Us having compatible views and opinions felt like we were soulmates. Uh-oh, this word isn't allowed here. Ahem. It felt as if we were marriage material ☝️ in a purely pragmatic way that doesn't involve such trivial pesky notions as feelings. And then he broke up with me saying that he didn't FEEL he liked me that way anymore and we didn't VIBE as friends anymore. I was heartbroken, but I was also angry. This was an ideological dealbreaker!!! How dare you invoke feelings in this, like some sort of heathen?! Relationships are about commitment and commitment only!!!

But this was October. In the meantime I realised one thing. I don't want to be in the camp that says commitment can just exist without feelings, either. Yes it's obviously cringe to be constantly swayed by your feelings and cut off any relationship before it even has a chance to develop into something. But isn't it also cringe to treat marriage like a contract? Like yeah we two could be just any random man + woman on this planet (☝️ so long as we both happen to be Christian and agree on the right stuff) and it would be more than enough for a good marriage. Cause after all that's all marriage is. Commitment for the sake of commitment.

Well. Can I even agree with this thesis anymore without lying to myself?! When I think of this whole "only criterion is shared values thing" I wanna jump out of my skin!! Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?!!!!! Yet people around me act like finding people with these basic traits of Christian + some more opinions in common is already so scarce so as to make me having any additional standards an absolute caprice. "Beggars can't be choosers" as the common saying goes.

But maybe all the cynicists (including me, way too many times) and brutal pragmatists (also me when at times) are wrong about this!!!!! Maybe love does exist and maybe people who can truly connect and be on the same wavelength do exist. Maybe you don't have to choose between feelings and commitment as if these were antonyms or fundamentally incompatible or opposite ideological positions. What if treating relationships as a way to fulfill your infatuation AND treating marriage like a social contract in which romance has no place are EQUALLY CRINGE AND SHAMEFUL AND EMBARRASSING positions to hold. What if marriage didn't have to be drudgery. Obviously there'll always be compromise to be made, there's no such thing as a perfect person. Obviously even people who love each other can't get along perfectly 100% of the time. OBVIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EVERY RELATIONSHIP TAKES *WORK*

But can we pretend Work is all a relationship ever is?! This is equally as harmful as pretending butterflies in stomach is all a relationship ever is. Why ever get married, for the love of everything good in this world, if you're not in love with that person?!!!!! Isn't it better to be single, if you're willing to commit to an utterly romance-less life?!!!!!

Did God create Adam and Eve like yeah go tolerate each other for as long as you both live. NO!!!!!! The first thing Adam says to Eve when he sees her isn't like ugh I'll have to put up with her for many many years to come. It's "flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone" -> recognising that they are made of the same things!!!!! That underneath it all, they are the same. People. When God creates Eve it's in the context of "it's not good for man to be alone". Given that Eve was the 2nd human ever, this isn't exclusively about marriage but about human companionship in general. And why on Earth should marriage be something lesser than the very beautiful human companionship we find in our friends? What happened to one's spouse being one's BEST FRIEND?!

Not to mention the myriad of verses in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes (and Song of Songs........) that speak of marriage in, dare I use such a scandalous word, romantic terms. Like enjoy life with the wife of your youth, and her caresses etc etc etc? Come on man.

Yes we all agree that forever chasing the next thrill is not only less than ideal and kinda cringe and embarrassing, but in fact actively wrong. But why do we act like the opposite extreme is good?! Why do we act like merely tolerating each other is the best we can hope out of marriage. Like does it console you in any way that at least you're not a serial divorcee??? Like oh I'm not like those in the world, I don't leave my spouse even though I don't love her/ him. Umm clearly the core problem is why do NOT love your spouse??? Obviously divorce is not the solution here, fixing the relationship somehow is!!! Why do we take for granted that feelings of being in love with ONE'S OWN SPOUSE have an inevitable expiration date of like... one month into the marriage at most.

For what it's worth, and I've said it already, true love can only exist in the context of commitment. So love without commitment is, at best, unverifiable as to whether it's true or not. But commitment without love? That's beyond possible. We can always commit to things without any percentage of our hearts being in it. That's more than possible, it's a reality we all live every day in at least aspect of our lives. But why make MARRIAGE one of these aspects?! Like even just staying at a job you hate is stressful enough, why would you not actively want to be in love with your own spouse instead of being like yeah I guess we mostly get along and that's more than enough. All that matters is at least we have common values 🙏

Bottom line is I feel like in BOTH a so called "love but no commitment" situation AND a "commitment only/ above anything else ever including or especially feelings" situation, it's love that's lacking. Both extremes are bad!!!!!!!!!!! I just wish I saw more acknowledgement that the latter is bad too, since we already all agree the former is bad.

[ambitious-feed-5023]

hot take but the way people throw around “narcissistic abuse” online has gotten completely out of control

like suddenly every bad ex, every argument, every person who didn’t meet your emotional expectations is a “narcissist” and every unpleasant interaction is “abuse”

not everything is a clinical condition. not everything is abuse. sometimes someone is just selfish. sometimes they’re immature. sometimes the relationship was unhealthy on both sides. that doesn’t make it a diagnosable personality disorder or a specialized category of abuse

and honestly, reducing everything to “narcissistic abuse” kind of flattens what actual abuse looks like. it turns a serious pattern of manipulation and control into a buzzword you can slap onto any situation where you felt hurt

you’re allowed to say “that relationship sucked” without needing to medicalize it. you’re allowed to leave people who treat you poorly without turning them into a diagnosis

not every bad person is a narcissist. not every painful experience is abuse. words mean things, and when you stretch them this far, they stop meaning anything at all

[lutawolf]

hi luta! you've talked about cultural d/s (or soft d/s) relationships, specifically in asia. as an asian myself, i've definitely noticed it in my community. i was wondering what your thoughts on it were and if you think that's more or less harmful to a relationship. in my opinion, on one hand a lot of it is not negotiated so its negative in that aspect. but on the other hand people have their needs met in a culture that is very taboo when talking about relationships.

Hey!

I might be overreaching here, but honestly? Power dynamics are baked into human life. America loves to yell, “Relationships should be equal!!” but in practice, every relationship has a push‑and‑pull relationship of some sort. Someone takes the lead on X, and someone yields on Y. That’s not inherently bad; it’s just how people function.

That’s also why so many of these romances work. They mimic the relationships we know and love. They’re not just about “love”; they’re also about how power shifts get challenged or get reaffirmed between two people. That tension makes the story richer.

Where it gets tricky is when people slap BDSM labels onto what’s really just cultural hierarchy or soft D/s vibes. Once you use those terms, you’re anchoring it in a community with its own history, ethics, true rules, and expectations.

Now, zooming out: Asian societies run on hierarchy. It’s not just “romance flavor,” it’s the operating system. Hierarchy provides order, efficiency, and a sense of stability. But it also means roles aren’t always negotiated; they’re assumed. That’s why it can feel both comforting (needs are met without awkward conversations) and suffocating (individual needs get buried).

Compare that to the U.S., where the cultural script is “everyone’s equal; even kids can call out adults.” That sounds great in theory, but it also breeds a society where no one wants to take crap from anyone, leading to a society full of violence and little respect. Meanwhile, Asian cultures prize harmony, but individuals sometimes combust under the weight of unspoken expectations.

So is it harmful? It can be, especially if people never get to voice their needs. But it can also be functional, because it gives people a framework in a culture where talking about relationships is taboo. Neither system is perfect. Honestly, nothing ever is. The best we can do is stay aware of the dynamics, laugh at the absurdity when we can, and keep aiming for that messy middle ground.

[pinkliyla2]

bro’s jealous of a ghost

just saw a reddit post from a woman who got a memorial tattoo for her childhood friend turned high school sweetheart who died at 20. her new boyfriend said it “disrespects” him and she should get it removed. the top comment said, “it’s fine that it bothers him but he shouldn’t demand you remove it.” no. it’s not fine that it bothers him. if you find yourself jealous of your girlfriend’s dead long-term boyfriend, you need to get a grip. got beef with a dead kid? mad she still remembers her prom date who died tragically? loser behavior. seek help. you’re not competing with anyone — you’re just proving she downgraded, Read more

[jillianallen14]

I’m really tired of the discourse surrounding boundaries in relationships that’s been all over the internet lately.

People fundamentally don’t understand that a boundary is kind of like an agreement. Almost like a little contract. If someone sets a certain boundary & you don’t like/agree with that boundary or you don’t think you can adhere to it, you are free to leave! But if you stay & you accept that boundary, there is an expectation that you follow through with adhering to that boundary. And no, you’re not being forced (as long as you’re not in an abusive relationship); you agreed to it.

Yes, there is nuance to this conversation when someone sets a boundary when you’ve already been in a relationship with them & it’s less hard to just up and leave. That can cross into the territory of being controlling, depending on the context. But in the early stages or when you’re just dating? You are completely free to walk away if you don’t like someone’s boundaries or you don’t like their expectations of what a relationship should look like. You owe each other nothing at that point except communication.

If someone you’re dating/talking to doesn’t like p0rn & doesn’t want you watching it if the two of you end up in a relationship, and you don’t like that boundary, you don’t have to be in that relationship! There is no need for you to belittle their boundary just because you don’t agree because I can promise you that there are people who agree with them. Let them go find those people & you can find the people who agree with you.

If you are hurt by the person you’re dating liking people’s sexy Instagram pics & you communicate this respectfully to them & they think it’s silly and unreasonable, either of you are free to leave. Your values clearly don’t align, and that’s not likely to change or get better when it comes to bigger and more important issues.

You can think people’s boundaries are stupid or unreasonable, but that’s NOT A PERSON YOU SHOULD BE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH. I don’t know why people are acting like they’re personally victimized by someone having a boundary they don’t like.

Again, there is nuance when it comes to abusive dynamics. But your partner calmly telling you that something is making them uncomfortable & they’d feel more comfortable if you stopped doing it is not controlling or abusive. It’s them attempting to communicate with you. If you don’t think you can stop doing whatever it is that they want, then you need to honestly tell them that so that both of you can assess what to do about the relationship. Either you reach some kind of a compromise or you go your separate ways. But no one has been controlled or abused in that situation.

Relationships are about compatibility. That’s what they’re built on. If you & your partner share wildly different values & wildly different ideas of what a relationship looks like (whether that be a monogamous relationship or a polyamorous one), then you probably shouldn’t be together.

It’s really not that goddamn complicated. If your partner thinks going to strip clubs is cheating & you think it’s not, you probably shouldn’t be in a relationship with each other because you likely have way different ideas of what a monogamous relationship should look like. That doesn’t make either of you wrong or bad, it just makes you incompatible.

If I don’t want kids and my partner does, we shouldn’t be together. That’s non-negotiable for me. People are allowed to have other non-negotiable boundaries when they’re looking for a compatible partner.

[rudegyalcharm]

I want to say something messy lol

[glittergradient]

do u ever doubt they're together? because dan has been saying he has commitment issues and i don't know what to make of it

I think when he says he has commitment issues he means that he has a history of starting something and not carrying it through to the end: his university degree, now the london marathon, his struggle to commit to a specific type of videos on his channel, especially in recent years, etc. I don’t think it has anything to do with his personal relationships. plus he called phil his ‘companion through life’.. that’s a big statement, especially since he made it in the context of a video that was so important to him. it means that he’s convinced he and phil will face the rest of their life together, side by side. he’s saying this at the age of 28, but he’d already said it when he was 18, and now we know for sure that they were romantically involved back then (‘do you think you and phil will be best friends forever?’ ‘that’s the plan’). ten years later that statement still rings true. it doesn’t get any more committed than that.

[inflammatoryfandomblog]

@kaedeichinose said: “bc the writers are straight men and thats how they think normal relationships are”

i think i know what you mean and i both agree and disagree with you there. it’s definitely the case that in a lot of romance literature/television/film/whatever, there are a lot of weird and iffy dynamics that are normalized and even romanticized.

and... i get it, art deals with a lot of things and i’m not here to police what can and can’t be covered by it. but like--if an element’s there, you have to face the fact that the element’s there, right? you can’t put something in your story and proceed to tell it as if they never existed.

so definitely there is a part of it with the writers not being very critical about (especially but not exclusively hetero) romantic relationships, how they’re sold to us as a culture, and how other people reacted to them in the past. 

my issue with this specific instance in rwby is that... B-Y’s romantic build-up is just so much edgier than their straight counterparts (re/nora and ar/kos--being ships that involve major characters). re/nora and ar/kos have their flaws that stem from what m+k take for granted about relationships (ar/kos especially... no i will not ever let them live down the “the main purpose a woman has is to be romantically fulfilled” garbage) but BY is so much nastier for no reason.

it’s a wlw ship that revolves around an abusive man (adam) to the point that said abusive man’s dialogue, for six seasons, was the main thing that cements the ship as canon. a wlw ship, apparently, cannot exist on its own without being tied to a toxic straight one (tauradonna). make of that what you will. the characters involved have such huge beefs with each other and such heavy dynamics that are just handwaved away as Typical Romance Tropes because... if you’re in love with a girl, apparently, you’re going to suffer for it, tough shit. that’s just the way the world works.

people compare it to renora a lot but that just... doesn’t... work? because there’s so much more baggage in BY’s relationship. BY shares a lot of the basic beats but the devil is in the details: renora would not be approached in the same if ren reminded nora of a man in her past that emotionally abused her and nora thought that ren abandoned her just like her hypothetical father did only to latch onto him when he comes back by coincidence and either nora or ren blamed the other for the destruction of their village for a year and they were coded interracial with one member doing the equivalent of luring the other with fried chicken and they had only spent one year with each other and one of them didn’t really understand the other’s disability... it’s like... why is so much of their relationship so negative when the straight ships, while not Purely Good and Wholesome, don’t have nearly as much baggage?

to me there’s ... a really clear disparity in how they’re written that can’t just be attributed to m+k taking straight romance tropes for granted--or maybe it can just be explained by m+k overcompensating by inserting all these weird tropes. i think that in their effort to be “subtle” about the Gay Stuff(TM), they haphazardly utilized parallels without putting some thought as to the big picture they painted--they just didn’t think any of it through... which is the whole problem with rwby’s writing, really. if you want to... think about... what you’re watching, it doesn’t work.

anyways that was a lot of meandering about to get to the answer “yeah you’re probably right.”