Plural Community Pressure (and letting go of guilt)
Yes, headmates have their basic rights and needs to be treated equally, but how you meet needs and define rights will depend on how your plurality actually functions.
This is a bit of advice I (Thorn) have learned through one of my headmates today, that I'd like to spread into the community!
So, don't get me wrong. I genuinely believe the plural community (the uh.. non-anti-endo side) is really great at reminding its members that all forms of plurality exist and that there's technically no right or wrong way to be plural, so long as you treat your system members as equals and provide them their basic rights.
I am the original body owner of my collective. That alone is something definitely not every system has. It automatically sort of makes me the host within this physical world, while Dimitri naturally takes the lead in headspace.
Throughout the years I've learned that in order to give headmates what they deserve and conform to their rights: they should be allowed to use the body as much as they want, or be allowed to be around (projected or just co-con) as much as they want to be. My life needs to be shared as much as they want.
I've noticed overtime that I'd start feeling guilty if my life or energy didn't allow for this to happen. Not in the sense that I'm doing something wrong with my responsibility as a host, but rather that I worry I might veer into neglectful territory if I accidentally block out a headmate one too many times.
Now, today I had a really interesting in-depth talk with my headmate Secile about our collective, and this specific topic. I told her about the guilt, and to my surprise, she didn't understand why I would feel guilty in the first place.
Because the truth is, this is not her main world. Our headspace is SO detailed that she considers it her real, physical world. So going here, in this physical world, automatically becomes more of a visit rather than an actual "right to be here".
She said quote:
"I can borrow your body, but I don't borrow your existence."
She also told me:
"You don't owe us anything."
That hit hard.
I realized that my collective is shaped in such a way that my world and headspace are equal. Applying the structures I've picked up from our community simply does not fit our internal architecture: To us, headspace it's so real that it doesn't feel like I created it, but rather as if I built a bridge to a different universe.
That idea really helps to shape how our plurality works, and it explains why our physical-world access doesn’t carry the same ethical weight as it might in some systems. It means I can let go of some responsibilities other system hosts may sometimes be more concerned with.
So my advice to other systems is not to push your plurality into something that is "expected" by the community. Yes, it's true that your headmates should not be neglected, but how you can provide headmates their basic rights and needs will also depend on how your plurality functions.
Sometimes, the kindest thing you can do is stop holding yourself to rules that were never meant for your internal architecture.
I thank Secile for teaching me that.
