boggling at how to do this counterfactual in Aella's relationship survey. my partner's desire/preference/everything is so intertwingled with everything else... I can't just swap it out like a module.
Why you can't swap a partner's preferences like a module
5 tweets · March 2024 · 47 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
like in this particular case, our monogamy is related to a model that we have about how sex and bonding work so am I trying to imagine she has an alternate model? what alternate model? do I share that model? why did our models change?
or has she suddenly become way more tolerant to the prospect of our relationship collapsing due to inadvertent bonding with someone else? if so, that's cause for concern! so my focus would be on turning towards healing the relationship if at all possible
and this is all leaving aside the matter of like, if something that seems so coherent suddenly were to change so dramatically, that would be such a huge unexpected change in her that it would itself cause a drop in trust!
fwiw my partner and I, prior to being with each other, were both poly, so we're coming at this whole thing quite reflectively, not with monogamy as an assumed default we've both noted that it would have been hard to be with someone who didn't get that perspective